


The Last Mistake

by morgana07



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst Dean Winchester, Angst Sam Winchester, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgana07/pseuds/morgana07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After learning that Roy & Walt jumped Sam while he was in Purgatory, Dean goes solo to keep a promise he made years ago. When things go bad with an unexpected betrayal, can Sam find his brother in time to keep this act from being someone else’s Last Mistake?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I’d planned to do this for a while but I’ve been putting it off until the last story, ‘You’re Not a Grunt, You’re My Brother’ took the turn it did and made it pretty clear that Dean needed to handle Walt and Roy. It’s a semi-sequel, as it comes after that story but can be read as a 1-shot I think if someone just comes across this without reading the other first. I hadn’t planned on it being a chapter story, but again not even authors can fully control the plot. So read and enjoy.
> 
> There is some minor violence, nothing too graphic in this one.

 

**South East Lousiana:**

“Yeah, this looks promising.”

Dean Winchester had certainly been doubting some recent choices and while he didn’t doubt this one per se, he did just slightly wish he would’ve asked for a bit more details on where the hell he was going actually was located.

Double checking that his weapon was loaded and easy to access, he checked to be certain he had other things before making sure the Impala was parked far enough back in the heavy brush that it wouldn’t be seen and then just prayed that it also didn’t sink in the way too soft dirt.

“Sorry, baby. Y’know I wouldn’t leave you here normally but this is for Sammy,” he spoke softly to the car without thinking how strange that might seem to others.

Letting his hand run over the roof one last time, Dean’s green eyes took on a harder look when he turned to stare off at the distant, overgrown muddy path that, according to his source and the very reluctant locals, would lead him to his ultimate destination.

He’d known he’d be heading deep into bayou country for this gig but he hadn’t been expecting the damn cabin to be on some overgrown and abandoned old sugar cane plantation that was close to being reclaimed by the swamps and its own inhabitants.

Dean hesitated then blew out a breath. This had been coming for close to three years and after what little he’d pulled from his brother and the minimal amount of details that Jefferson had added when Dean had cornered the older hunter on the phone three nights ago he knew he would not put off what he should’ve handled the moment he and Sam returned from Heaven after the bastards shot them.

“Sorry, Sammy,” he whispered, knowing his younger brother would more than likely be pissed when he figured out what Dean was doing since this reaction was one of the reactions that had kept Sam from telling Dean the truth behind Sam’s dropping out of hunting for the year that Dean was trapped in Purgatory.

A hunter for the biggest part of his life, Dean had been killing evil things and looking after his little brother for as long as he could seriously remember. Well, he knew he’d been looking after Sam longer than killing evil sons of bitches like witches, ghosts, etc, but this was one of the few times that while he was hunting evil, this evil wasn’t of the supernatural kind.

A quick glance at a hand drawn map showed him about how far into the plantation the tiny old cabin was from where he was so Dean guessed the best way to approach would be. He figured he’d handle the rest once he got there because while he wasn’t big on killing humans, he had done it before and he’d made a promise three years ago that this last mistake had just hastened.

Not big on swamps or bayous to begin with, the soft ground and heavy growth of trees and weeds were making Dean’s nerves more on edge than he liked. He had no doubts that the odds of his arrival being unexpected were slim since the small community he’d arrived in seemed more afraid of the one man he was hunting than the legends of this place being cursed or hunted.

The low sounds of the night were all the hunter heard but the further he went the more he thought back to what had sent him on this solo hunt.

Three nights earlier he’d finally learned more than he liked about what his brother had been up to while Dean was in Purgatory.

Since his return, Sam had let Dean bitch and gripe that Sam had simply walked away right after he’d vanished. He took the bitterness and jibes that he hadn’t even bothered to look for Dean, that he’d simply walked away, hit a dog, met a girl, and settled into a normal life.

This is what Dean believed because this is what Sam had basically led him to think…until the other night when finally, after all the strain and stress of recent months, of killing a damn hound of Hell to kick off the three trials to shut Hell once and for all, Sam’s emotions got the better of him and it all came out.

‘Sure, I had to poke and prod to get some of it,’ Dean thought to himself sourly, still seeing the haunted look in Sam’s too huge hazel eyes when he realized he’d said too much and his suddenly very intuitive big brother had caught on to things he hadn’t wanted him to know.

A huge part of Dean had always known that something had been off. He’d practically raised Sam. He knew his brother like the back of his own hand and knew how the kid reacted to things. So for Sam to just say he quit and that was all, the big brother in Dean reacted faster than the side of him that did actually have common sense.

So while he’d been hurt that Sam said he hadn’t even looked for him, that other side knew there was another side to that lie. He just needed to wait for Sam to eventually give it up because as Dean knew well, his brother had learned to lie to him pretty well…he just couldn’t do it very long.

That night Sam had gotten tired and too emotional so he hadn’t been watching either his tone or the unspoken words that he should’ve known his brother would pick up on and eventually he’d revealed the three months that he had looked for Dean.

“Three damn months and then he gets set up,” Dean was pissed as it was about that even though he knew that Jefferson wouldn’t set his brother up on purpose, he was still suspicious enough to be leery now…especially now.

Dean knew how Sam was and could see it play it. Three months of dead leads, fallen hope, and being alone since before, when Dean was in Hell, Sam still had people he could depend on. This time, he’d been basically solo and when the lead came from this tiny little hellhole he’d jumped at it and didn’t see the trap until it was too late.

Three years ago, it had gotten out to the hunter community about Sam and Dean’s roles in opening the gate to release Lucifer and jumpstart the whole Apocalypse.

While Bobby had done his best to smooth it over, to explain what he could without giving away the nitty gritty details, namely Sam’s addiction to demon blood and the abilities it had once given him, there were hunters who held a grudge. Hunters who didn’t see Sam as anything different than what they hunted.

Dean knew his little brother had encountered a few of those while they’d been hunting solo for a short time. “Which reminds me that he still hasn’t come clean with me about some of that,” he muttered, reminding himself to keep that for a later time since he could now see a low light coming up in the distance which meant the cabin was getting closer and so was his prey.

Between the looming Apocalypse, having two Archangels wanting to ride them as cheap suits, and every other problem pressing a wedge between them, Dean accepted that things hadn’t been good.

He’d been on a downward spiral with self doubt and plenty of doubts about Sam when he’d drank himself to sleep one night in a cheap motel only to wake up to two morons with weapons aimed at him and Sam.

The fact that some stupid son of a bitch was pointing a gun at his brother had woken Dean up fast. Then the fact registered that he actually knew the voices under the masks pissed him off more.

Running afoul of strangers were one thing but he actually had known these jackasses, had known that they’d hunted once or twice with his Dad and that made him madder.

His reaction time was off and but Dean had still hoped to draw Walt’s attention off of Sam so that maybe his brother would have a chance since Roy had never been much of an issue but to this night Dean could still hear the sound of that shotgun blast that tore through Sam, could see his brother lifeless on the bed.

“‘When I come back, and I will come back, I’ll find you,’” he’d made that dark promise a moment before the gun fired again and he found himself on the back side of Heaven, looking for Sam and avoiding that damn bald Angel.

Coming back, things had gone from bad to worse so he’d never had the chance to actually keep that promise. Since then, Sam had been locked in a Cage with Lucifer and Michael, had been without a soul and nearly beyond Dean’s control and had nearly gone mad.

Dean figured he’d been a little busy to consider paying the two morons who’d killed them a visit and probably they would’ve stayed off his radar if he hadn’t learned one thing…

If he hadn’t learned that Walt and his little cohort in crime hadn’t decided to be wiseasses and jump his little brother. Even that might not have pissed Dean off to the extent that he would’ve left Sam on his own back at their new base in Kansas to come to the bayous of Louisiana to keep a promise he’d made three years earlier.

Fist clenching in a rage that he rarely had felt this much, Dean could just close his eyes to see the scars still on Sam’s upper back and shoulder. However, it was the brand that had been cut into his lower back that had made this visit a certainty and would make that the last mistake of Walt’s life.

Noticing as he slowly got closer that the battered old truck that the waitress back at the diner said Walt drove appeared absent, Dean scowled.

He’d left Sam with the excuse of checking in on their resident prophet/geek Kevin to see if he’d figured out what the second trial would be. That had been three days ago.

Dean didn’t like leaving Sam on his own right then as a general rule because he wasn’t sure how his brother was handling things since he’d seen him favoring his right arm more than once since killing that hellhound.

Sam had been on edge the morning Dean had left but he’d shrugged that off to still being emotionally wrung out from the night before and his concern over what his brother would eventually say to him or, in this case, eventually do.

He had no doubt that by now Sam had clued in on Dean’s plan. If he was gone any longer he knew his little brother would start backtracking him and Dean did not want Sam down in the tiny Louisiana town nor did he want his brother any closer to Walt and Roy than he needed to be.

“As in at all,” Dean decided firmly, refusing to let either of the sons of bitches near his brother.

Taking another look at the front of the run down, little cabin that he figured must have been an overseers cabin from its position on the former plantation.

A deep set sense of caution warned him to go slow, to do this by the book. The feeling of eyes on him should have been telling but Dean shrugged that off as listening too many old stories in town earlier that morning. He did take the time to circle the cabin once to look for another door or to be certain Walt’s truck wasn’t parked behind the building.

Not seeing the truck and not seeing anything that told him differently, he stayed in the shadows as he finished his circle to notice a window toward the front of the cabin that gave a pretty clear view of the place.

“Clear view in, clear view out,” Dean muttered, those warning bells beginning to go off a lot louder. He saw Roy, the smaller, skinnier of the duo, pacing the cabin as if restless or… “Waiting for something.”

Dean Winchester had been accused of a lot of things in his life and hell, he copped to most of it, but never to willingly walk into something that was beginning to scream like a bad move. “Damn it, Jeff,” he swore under his breath while trying to ignore the pain that this possible betrayal gave him.

Deciding it best to take a step back, retreat to the Impala and a safer spot to think and maybe, just maybe, call Sam, Dean had gone to turn when his eyes caught sight of something piled under a pile of tossed brush. “What the hell?”

Not stupid by any means but too curious at times, Dean used the barrel of his weapon to push it aside to see that mostly it seemed to be trash, old food containers, moldy food and some spent shell casings.

“Assholes,” he whispered, knowing one of his Dad’s first lessons had been to never leave anything behind that could be traced back to you.

He was about to follow the advice of his sixth sense and get the hell out when something else grabbed his attention and he felt his jaw clench.

“Sonuvabitch,” flicking some trash aside, his fingers touched material that seemed stiff but as he pulled it closer to see the amount of dried blood on the worn flannel shirt that he’d asked Sam about when he’d gotten back from Purgatory.

Sam had tossed off some excuse about the shirt getting oil or something on it and he’d had to toss it out. Now as Dean’s fingers clenched around it, he felt the dried blood, found more than a few shreds that were reminding him why he was down here when he touched something in the pocket and once again saw red.

The black rubber bracelet had been something they’d both once had. Dean had finally given Sam back his after he’d gotten out of that mental hospital after memories of the Cage and Lucifer had nearly killed his little brother and Sam had been wearing it that last day when they’d faced down Dick Roman.

It had just dawned on Dean the other night while his cranky and pissed off little brother had been poking him in the chest that Sam hadn’t had the bracelet and now, as he drew it from the pocket of the shirt, he knew why.

Setting his brother up to be jumped was one mistake. Putting hands on him, hurting him in any way, shape, or form, was another mistake but to take from him one of the few things Sam had left in his life that meant anything to him, well to Dean those were mistakes that would be handled very slowly and very seriously until the hunter in him snapped back to the front.

He’d been in Purgatory a year. Sam was jumped by the Dynamic Duo of stupidity three months into that. That left seven months plus the few since Dean’s return to get rid of this crap when it looked like it had just been tossed recently.

“Shit, shit, shit!” realization hit a second before sharp and brutal pain slashed through his skull as something hard crashed down on the back of his head and he fell to the wet ground with a sick feeling that got worse as a hard boot cracked a rib. “Ugh!”

“Well, well, well, you look pretty good for a dead man, Winchester. Though I guess you’re pretty good at coming like that,” the voice was as familiar to Dean’s ringing head now as it was three years ago. It just sounded tinier due to the pain he was in.

Rolling onto his back, Dean managed to cut off the next grunt as another kick hit him hard before the boot pinned his gun hand into the mud and kicked his Colt away before kneeling over Dean with a sneer.

“Heard you were coming, Dean,” Walt grinned, seeing the bloodied shirt and smirking again. “I told Roy keeping that piece of crap would come in handy. You here about that message we gave Sammy?”

In pain and barely able to see with the throbbing behind his eyes, Dean still wasn’t going to give this son of a bitch the satisfaction of knowing that. “It’s…Sam,” he gritted, still refusing to let anyone else call his little brother by the nickname that Sam only let him use. “Screwed…up, Walt,” he gasped out as he felt his wrist ache under the weight of the boot. “Promised you’d…see me again and…you never should’ve touched…my brother.”

Amused at this, the much shorter but stockier hunter laughed, deciding this night was going to be more fun than he’d counted on as he considered the short but fat piece of polished oak he’d used to crack Dean’s head open with.

“This time when I kill you, I’ll make damn sure you stay dead, Winchester and then Roy and I’ll finish what I started with your brother,” Walt vowed, giving the oak bat a hard swing down.

Eyes clearing enough, Dean had a short time to see the weapon aimed at his head before pain and bright lights exploded again and his consciousness drained away with thoughts of Sam and the idea that this plan better work before everything went dark with just Walt’s sickening laugh in his ears.

 

**TBC**


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam realizes something's not quite right and goes to the one source he knows that may be able to help him.

**24 Hours Earlier, Garth’s Houseboat: **

“Where’s my brother?”

Nearly jumping a full foot off the floor, Garth vowed to start keeping that door shut even as he was quickly spinning around and trying to backpedal at the same time.

“W…who?” he managed to get out while also putting as much distance between himself and a clearly agitated Sam Winchester as he could since his houseboat was sort of crowded.

“I think he means Dean since that’s the only brother I’ve ever seen Sam with.”

The all too helpful voice of the zoned out prophet who was staring bleary eyed at various pieces of paper and the half of stone tablet was not the best thing Garth needed right then since he was more than aware of who Sam wanted. He just wasn’t sure how to answer him without getting killed one way or the other.

“Where’s Dean, Garth?” Sam demanded, trying to out maneuver the tiny, skinny hunter in between all the hunting stuff and books that Kevin had tossed around in his mad haste to solve this latest mystery.

“Ummm, haven’t seen him?” Garth hoped that sounded convincing then groaned.

Head poking up from behind a stack of books, a crumpled pile of paper and several food containers that contained things that even had Garth blinking, Kevin Trang blinked for a moment as if bringing the real world back into focus to frown.

“Yeah, you have,” he reminded helpfully, rolling his eyes with a small smile. “He showed up a day or so ago with food and stuff for me and asked you to help him track down some yoyos as he called them. Then he hung you up on the coat rack over there until you agreed and…”

“I think I like him better when he’s muttering to that rock,” Garth rubbed his face a second before letting out a yelp as his feet once again left the floor of his boat. “Hey! Now you guys have to stop this!”

A little guy who was much shorter than Dean, Garth was really small compared to Sam who was four inches taller than his own brother so it wasn’t hard for Sam to pick him up and hook the back of his belt loop to the coat rack on the far wall.

“Is that what Dean wanted? Help finding Walt and Roy?” Sam demanded, feeling the frustration he’d been feeling just hit the breaking point. “Garth, what did you tell him?”

Sam had been edgy since waking up the morning after he’d exploded on his brother. At first it had just started because Sam was pissed that Dean just saw himself as a grunt who could be easily sacrificed for the greater good.

Then it had gotten progressively worse until finally Sam had slipped and revealed things about his time running solo while Dean was in Purgatory. Things that he’d never wanted Dean to know, mainly for this very reason, because if Sam knew anything it was how his older brother would react to what had happened to Sam in Louisiana at the hands of hunters that Dean already had reason to hate.

“Garth! Did you help him?” Sam demanded, pretty sure of the answer before the wiggling little hunter shot him a dark look and he swore bitterly. “Damn it.”

“He had me in sorta the same position you do, Sam. Kinda hard to say no to that if I ever wanted to get down,” Garth objected, giving up on getting down and so finally crossed his arms to pout. “I’ll tell you what I told him if you get me down.”

Sam just lifted one eyebrow before shifting a look at Kevin. “Where’d Dean go?” he asked the prophet, ignoring a stuttering Garth for the moment as he also ignored the cold ball of fear building in his heart.

He’d known that eventually after telling Dean who’d jumped him, who’d put the brand on his back that his brother would go after Walt.

Hell, he’d been waiting for Dean to go after those two for three years but now was not the time and Sam knew that. They were on the verge of closing the gates of Hell for good and Sam had just taken on the task of doing the three trials that would close them.

Getting sidetracked would not help them…would not help him since Sam knew eventually he’d have to tell Dean about the pain in his arm and the occasional nosebleed and once he did that there would be no getting his brother off his back but for Dean to have done this, to have gone after Walt then that was gong to bring a lot more shit than Sam wanted because he had no doubts that Walt would tell Dean the rest of it.

“South east Louisiana, tiny little town not on any new map about fifteen minutes outta Houma or so Garth told Dean after he got him off the wall,” Kevin recited without looking up and missed the way Sam’s face went pure white.

“Hey!” Garth yelled when he noticed Sam’s reaction. “Sam? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or…thanks,” he mumbled when Sam took him off the coat rack but didn’t miss the way the younger Winchester’s hands were shaking. “Sam? Dean didn’t say what he wanted with them but…I’ve been a hunter a while so I’ve crossed paths with a couple hunters named Roy and Walt and…”

Exchanging looks with Kevin who had decided to take a break from cracking the secret of the second trial to swallow more caffeine and pay attention. “Dean was in his ‘I’m pissed and someone is going to pay painfully’ mood too,” he pointed out. “Then he got that phone call and his mood got worse.”

“Kevin, isn’t the stone talking to you?” Garth asked with a pointed look, blinking when Sam suddenly turned his back to them and stepped into the small room that Garth used mainly for supplies. “Not good,” he decided, debating for just a short moment before following.

Ever since the first time Garth had met the Winchesters he’d been a little in awe. In awe and terrified at the same time because as he quickly learned to piss Dean Winchester off was to invite certain death.

Garth remembered when Bobby had called him in to help Dean out on a case. He’d been thrilled at the chance to work with Dean because coming up as a hunter there were always those whose names a hunter like Garth remembered and respected.

He’d heard the rumors about Sam and Dean but hadn’t believed most of them and Bobby had been quick to slap him in the head about any he did believe too hard.

Dean was awesome in Garth’s eyes. Then he’d seen a side of Dean that few did and understood what had made the Winchesters the hunters they were because as Garth had seen, Dean lived and breathed being a hunter but he lived, breathed, and would die for his brother.

Seeing Sam as they’d found him that time with that quirky fan-obsessed girl showed Garth how far Dean would go if someone hurt Sam so this time when the rumors began flying and Garth looked deeper into just what Roy and Walt had been up to, he suspected he knew why Dean wanted them found and also why Sam looked spooked right then.

Of course, he also suspected something else that he wasn’t sure the Winchesters knew.

“I need you to tell me exactly where Dean went, Garth,” Sam spoke without looking as he stared at his clenched fist and the wrist that he once wore the black rubber band on. “I need to get to him cause he doesn’t know what he’s walking into. He’ll be too angry and…”

“He’s angry but that’s not what worried me about him going in without you or me,” Garth bit his lip, not wanting to be the one to tell Sam this. “That call Kevin mentioned…Sam, I hadn’t pinpointed Walt yet when Jefferson called Dean and told him that they were in Louisiana,” he waited as Sam turned to look at him, confused at first then slowly it began to gel.

Brain whirling at that news, Sam thought it through and didn’t like what he was coming up with. “I…was jumped in that same area. Jeff sent me down there but why would they still be…”

“After Dean left I called in a few favors from a couple guys outta New Orleans who do not like Walt and they say that those two have pretty much cornered the hunter’s market in southeast Louisiana and the Texas Panhandle,” Garth replied grimly, scuffing his boot on the floor. “They’ve staked out an old plantation that’s supposed to be cursed and…Sam!”

Slamming a fist into the bulkhead, Sam knew where his brother was being led but not why when it had always been him the community had issues with but they had believed that had been put behind them. Bobby had done his damnedest to clear that up and Jefferson was…

Pulling his phone out, he considered trying Dean but knew his brother’s phone was either shut off or dead cause it had been going to voicemail for the past day so as his heart hammered and his stomach clenched, Sam punched in another number.

“Hey, Jeff…it’s Sam,” he leaned against the doorframe as Garth handed him a piece of paper with coordinates on it but he knew those by heart since he’d followed them once before. “But I guess you’re not surprised to hear from me, right?”

There was a short silence as if the older man on the other end didn't know what to say. "Sam...I'm..."

 “You came to that cabin, you came after me, you stopped what was happening and you were there as I healed. Just like you were when Dean and I were kids. I made excuses to my brother the other night that you didn’t know that Walt and Roy were setting me up,” Sam closed his eyes against the sudden burning because if he’d had doubts the raspy breathing from the other end of the line told him. “You set me up, Jeff and now, you’ve set my brother up for them, didn’t you?” he asked, voice sharpening. “Didn’t you?”

 Jefferson had been a hunter longer than John so he’d been like a mentor to John and had seen his boys grow up. He’d been one of the hunters in their small circle that Sam had called on after Dean had nearly been killed fighting a Rawhead years ago and in some way, he still recalled these boys as just that…boys.

Now as he sat in his home office in lower Texas, he closed his eyes and fought the burning pain this betrayal was causing him.

 “Sam, you have to understand,” he began, hearing a choked laugh that reminded him far too much of this boy’s father when John was incredulous. “Yes…I did send you in knowing that Walt and Roy were waiting but I didn’t know how far he’d take it. I came then but…I can’t help Dean…and neither can you.”

 Fingers tightening on his phone at this comment, Sam could feel his blood running to ice again. “I’ll help my brother, Jeff. I’ll be damned if anyone hurts either one of us again,” he still didn’t understand one thing though. “You knew my Dad, Jeff. You knew Pastor Jim, Bobby…so you know how Dean and I were raised.

 “I grew up looking up to you. I grew up believing that you were one of the people we could count on, so tell me one thing before I go to help Dean…why?” Sam asked quietly, tone nearly breaking. “What did Dean or I ever do to you that you’d want to hurt us?”

 “Hurt you?” Jefferson sounded shocked, standing as if the younger Winchester could see him. “My God, Sam, how could you think that I’d willingly hurt you boys?”

 Eyes growing wide at the stupidity of that question, Sam actually laughed as he noticed Garth and Kevin pouring over a map and seeming to be fighting over routes. “Umm, you set me up for two sons of bitches and you just sent my brother into the same damn trap?” he reminded him. “That kind of spells hurt to me, Jeff.”

 “Sam, I didn’t have a choice,” Jefferson knew if he couldn’t help Dean then he at least owed Sam this. “A few years back, during all that end of the world, Apocalypse stuff, I did something that I shouldn’t have and someone…died. I’m not proud of it and I don’t understand all of it but…somehow Walt learned of it and he threatened to go to the authorities if I didn’t help him.”

 Considering this, Sam understood this since both he and Dean had done plenty of stuff in that period that neither were proud of. “Walt blackmailed you. He wanted me.”

 “Bobby was a huge reason that no one ever tried for you again, Sam. He and I did our best to protect you and Dean but after he died and then when Dean vanished…” the older man left the rest unsaid, sighing. “When I had second thoughts, realizing what he was planning I got you out but he’s not planning on letting that happen with Dean. You won’t get near that place, Sam.”

 “I just killed a Hellhound, Jeff,” Sam told him, voice quiet as his brain whirled with ideas. “I am fighting to fix whatever the hell I let go wrong between me and Dean and I am fighting to close the doors of Hell. I will not lose my big brother to some two-bit jackasses who killed us once. Dean made Walt a promise and if he’s hurt my brother…I’ll keep it because I’ll personally send the bastard to Hell.”

 Starting to hang up, Sam paused to take a shaky breath. “Jeff? I know you had a reason, it might even be a good one to you and I really don’t care that you set me up since I should be used to it but…I do care that you set Dean up. He’s my brother. He’s all I got left now. Please, pray that I find him before he’s hurt because if I don’t…my next stop will be to your door.”

 Disconnecting the call before the other hunter could reply, Sam stayed still for a minute to regather his thoughts then stepped out to nearly run into Garth, who was waiting with full Garth-hunting gear on.

 “I’m going with you,” he announced, shaking his head to stop the obvious disagreement. “Look, Sam, I know you and Dean don’t really take me seriously and I know you don’t like that I’ve taken over a lot of what Bobby used to do but…you need someone with you,” he pointed out, taking a stab in the dark to add. “If for nothing else then to shoot at Roy while you deal with Walt and then to cover your back while you get to Dean. I can do that.”

Glancing over Garth’s head at Kevin, Sam saw the prophet roll his eyes but nod in agreement and Sam did know he couldn’t go into this solo. “Fine, but you do what I say and steer clear when I say,” he told the skinny hunter, waving at Kevin before heading for the car he’d rented in Kansas upon figuring out his brother was up to something.

“Yep, heard that before and this hunter knows to stay the hell out of the way of a pissed off Winchester,” Garth muttered to himself, looking back at Kevin. “Eat something besides hotdogs and call your Mother. Sam, wait up!”

A look at Sam’s rental told Garth that they’d be taking his car, which wasn’t pretty but would get them to Louisiana in a hurry and had supplies he figured they’d need. “Sam?? looking up he noticed that Sam was holding his phone again but looked sick.

Garth held out his hand for the phone and listened to the message that must have been left while Sam was on the phone with Jefferson, he watched the eyes of the usually calm and mellow one of the Winchester’s change to hard and ice cold as those last words and the sound behind them played again in his ears.

Listening to Walt’s sneering tone had sent Sam into a near panic because just the sound reminded him of that incident but then what he was saying sank in and he heard the sounds in the background that he also knew.

 He’d heard them eight years ago in another run down cabin. His stoic old brother being tormented by the damn Yellow-Eyed Demon in the body of their own father. He heard the same pain this time but recognized something else.

 Sam knew Dean would never give Walt what he wanted. He’d never give him the satisfaction of hearing him beg and that would piss the hunter off more. Though it was what Sam heard last that settled it for Sam.

 “Last mistake, Walt,” he whispered, clutching his fingers around what he still carried in his pocket while gazing across the car roof at a wary Garth. “Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter Three

** Currently in Louisiana: **

“Argh!”

The ragged shout was bit back as it had been for the past twenty-some hours since Dean Winchester woke up tied to a sturdy chair in the run down former slaver keeper’s cabin.

“Stupid asshole! Just break or I’ll give you more than what we did to your precious little brother!” Walt was beyond furious by this point and it was beginning to show.

His head still more than a little fuzzy, along with his vision, Dean’s memories had slowly come back to how he’d ended up in this predicament.

He slowly recalled leaving Sam in Kansas while he chose to track down Walt and Roy, two backward hunters that Dean had serious issues with even before learning that they’d jumped and hurt his brother during the time Dean had been stuck in Purgatory.

Tracking them down had involved a stop to visit the littlest hunter who thought he could so Garth could be of some use but in the end it had been Jefferson who had told the elder Winchester where his prey was still hold up.

Tasting blood from the latest blows to his already bruised and swollen face, Dean’s ringing head was now debating his choice of leaving Garth behind…especially after he realized too late what he’d stepped in.

The punches and fists weren’t something Dean hadn’t dealt with many times in his life, hell he figured he’d dealt with worse than that at times from his own father. The knife dipped in whiskey and salt that had left little but deep slashes on his bare chest and arms was more difficult to ignore but even as Walt’s use of the knife or the short leather belt got more creative Dean refused to give the asshole what he wanted most.

Forcing his head back up to meet the furious eyes of one of his captors, Dean managed that careless smirk he could always drum up when it suited him and spat blood on the floor…blood that he really hoped wasn’t from anything too serious.

“Been…there, done…this before, asshole,” he gritted, twisting his wrists in the heavy ropes only to feel blood as they cut into his skin more. “Do your best, Walt, but I told you before…you better make sure you kill me cause I will kill…arrrgh!”

This time the hunter couldn’t quite stop the scream as he had been because he hadn’t been expecting hot piece of metal that was jammed into his side.

“Oh, I’ll kill you, punk,” Walt growled, jerking the poker back and sneering at the sound of tearing flesh. “But not until I’ve made you scream and beg for it.”

“Walt, it’s been two days. Dean’s not like the rest of ‘em. He’s not gonna break like that and you know we’ve only got so long before someone comes looking for him.” Roy, Walt’s partner, pointed out from across the back room where they usually did all the messy work.

More skinnier and slightly more quiet, Roy often followed along in Walt’s schemes no matter how distasteful or wrong they were.

He’d known three years earlier that going after the Winchesters was not a bright move but there’d been no denying the rumors and perhaps Sam had deserved being shot and even what Walt did this time but to this day Roy had no clue idea what his friend’s issue with Dean was that he’d both shot the guy that night in the motel but that he was determined to torture him here until he either broke or died of the wounds.

“He’ll break, Roy,” Walt promised, the sinister glare in his narrowing eyes was actually beginning to worry the other man. “Every man or bastard has his breaking point. I’ll find Dean’s or…just wait for his precious little brother to show up. Then we’ll see how tough he is when I show him exactly what we did to that freak.”

Already slipping in and out of shock due to the wounds he’d been given, Dean was struggling to stay conscious if only to see how far he could push the man when those last words made him lift his eyes up. “Sam…won’t come,” he knew that was a damn lie cause he had no doubts his little brother would come, especially after that damn phone call Walt placed from Dean’s cell.

“He’ll come,” Walt was sure of this, positive that the sounds of Dean being tortured under Roy’s expert use of the white-hot switchblade would bring the younger Winchester back to Louisiana. “You two are too weak. You risk too much, let yourself get dragged into a trap all cause your head wasn’t thinking straight. Sammy-boy’s the same way,” he laughed, jerking his head to the other side of the room where a steel table with straps sat. “Want me to tell you want I did to him?”

Jaw muscle twitching, Dean’s arm muscles strained against the ropes again but gasped at the punch to the kidneys. “You won’t…touch my brother, Walt,” he vowed quietly, pain slowly being forgotten as anger took over again and he made his vision clear to stare up into the face of his prime tormentor. “I told you …that before. You made the…mistake of…shooting him. This last time…will be the last damn time you…ever go after my brother.”

Seeing the veins in Walt’s neck begin to bulge told Roy that Dean was pushing the man way past the point that even Roy had seen him before. Then Dean’s words registered and he frowned. “Wait, when did you go after Sam before?” he asked, confused. “I thought that night in the motel when we shot ‘em was the first time.”

“Go get lunch, Roy,” Walt ordered, voice shaking in rage as he fought back the urge to punch this cocky son of a bitch’s face in. “Time for me to remind Winchester that being a wiseass isn’t a great thing when I can kill him.”

“What? You never told Roy?” Dean shook his head again, struggling to move his hands in the blood slicked ropes in hopes of working them loose enough so he could move his fingers.

“Shut up,” Walt growled, stepping forward and delivering a hard fist that snapped Dean’s head back with such force that even the chair fell over but didn’t break. “That was before Roy and I hooked up, so it ain’t none of his damn business.”

Roy was a follower and he knew that but yet he wasn’t completely foolish or stupid. He’d originally agreed to go after the Winchesters because of the rumors that had been kicked up about Sam during the Apocalypse. Now he was curious if there was more to it than that. “Walt? What’s Dean talking about? When did you go after Sam?”

Cursing the makers of old chairs and heavy rope in general, Dean was struggling to breath since when the chair fell, his already cracked open skull had hit hard and the blows to his chest and side was making being on his back harder to draw air in.

He’d been hoping something would at least crack so he could work either his arms or legs loose since if his ultimate plan was going to work, he needed free of this chair and that might mean pushing more buttons, which was a risky move since Walt was close to losing it.

“Kid was a freak. Should’ve known it even back then,” Walt shrugged it off, not wanting to go into details since no matter what Roy had seen or down in the recent years the guy could still turn into a wuss over certain things.

“Sam was fourteen years old and just hitting that damn growth spurt,” Dean spat back, memories and anger making it easier to ignore his own pain when the chair was jerked back up and a knife jabbed at his throat but he just shifted his eyes past the glowering Walt to look at Roy. “Your…buddy stumbled into a job my Dad was doing and stayed to ‘help’ out.

“His idea of helping out differed from mine when I got back to the motel…and he’d beat Sam to a damn bloody pulp after hitting him with whatever cocktail he still keeps in those hypos in his pocket,” Dean’s green eyes were glassy but clearing, seeing the smaller man’s eyes widen but merely grunted as another hard blow to the solar plexus was landed.

Rage made Walt a little clumsy on that last blow but he was pissed that this son of a bitch who should’ve been begging him by now was throwing this crap up and making Roy stare at him like he wasn’t perverted. “What?” he snapped, waving a dismissive hand. “The little snot pulled a knife on me.”

“He pulled a knife cause he caught you trying to rape the motel owner’s daughter,” Dean returned, eyeing the thin white scar that still showed on the man’s arm. “Guess Sammy got in a lucky shot before you drugged him. You were a big man, Walt. You had to drug a fourteen year old kid before you could beat him senseless. Too bad for you, Sammy’s big brother wasn’t so easy to deal with…was I?”

This time Dean saw the fist coming and took it to the face, feeling the chair tip and was able to at least keep his head from hitting the floor but he also heard something else. A small crack that gave him hope, hope that if he could stay alive long enough he’d still keep that promise.

“That way you want Dean to hurt?” Roy asked, silently asking himself again how he’d gotten to this point in his life. “Walt? You said this thing between you and Dean wasn’t personal. That Dean had to be dealt with because of what we did to his brother but…”

“Which time he hurt my brother is probably the better question to ask, genuis,” Dean pointed out, managing to bury the scream that could’ve come when that damn white-hot poker again was jammed into his bare flesh, only this it was held longer and he felt his consciousness start to go until the pressure eased up. Then he just felt like curling up until the nausea went away.

“Go get the damn food, Roy,” again Walt snapped, no longer willing to allow Winchester to turn this on him. He’d grown tired of playing. It was time to up the ante so to speak. “While you’re in town…pick up a couple boxes of Lye and some bleach.”

Blinking at the extra items, the other man frowned as he thought about it. “Why? Normally when you’re done with a body we toss ‘em in the swamp for the gators or something. We haven’t buried a corpse in months so…” he drew off as his friend turned to shoot him a dangerous, almost maniacal look and he suddenly knew those items weren’t going to be used to cover up the dead but on the living. “Walt, wait a second…”

“Dean thinks he’s so tough. We’ll just test that,” Walt grinned, not looking away from Dean as he jerked the chair back up while pulling his own blood stained knife. “Go get the crap, Roy! I’ll take care of Dean while you’re gone and then when you get that stuff back here we’ll have some real fun.”

Roy looked like he’d argue for a second then slowly he walked out of the cabin and tried to ignore the ragged scream that he heard as he drove away, missing the shadow way back in the tree line or the whisper thin mist that hovered back toward the old run down plantation.

“Well, wise guy, it’s just you and me ‘til Roy gets back,” Walt sneered from behind Dean, flicking the knife with a casual ease and grinning as it sliced across Dean’s shoulder blades then leaning around to stare into his face. “Want me to tell you exactly what happened to poor Sammy?”

The scream had been reflexive and Dean cursed for giving in to it but didn’t try to avoid the cold eyes that tried to stare him down. “Sure, go ahead,” he gritted, waiting until Walt moved back around in front of him to shift his painfully moving fingers until he could finally grasp what he hoped the two idiots had missed when they searched him. “A friend always…said it was good to confess before you die.”

Enraged at the flip tone, Walt reached over to grab the studded belt to wrap it around his hand. “I’m gonna enjoy this,” he promised then decided to wait, knowing he’d get more pleasure from watching the helpless Winchester as he told him in exact details what his little brother had endured and how much more Dean would endure before he took his last breath.

 

** Ten miles from the Plantation, local diner: **

“Oh, this place just does not look good,” Garth muttered after parking his car in front of appeared to be the only diner within fifty miles that might serve more than some form of lizard and yet it wasn’t the diner he was talking about.

Having taken a good look since there wasn’t much to the small town in the bayou, the little hunter had a gut feeling that getting information out of the locals wasn’t going to be a picnic.

Of course then he had his other problem to deal with. Dealing with a brooding upset Winchester of any nature wasn’t a good thing as he’d already discovered when Dean had been pissed at Becky and he’d honestly thought that nothing could get as bad or as scary or nerve-racking as that drive had been. Until now, that is.

Leaving Kevin on Garth’s houseboat, he and Sam had driven straight through in order to get to this tiny little dot that wasn’t even on any map Garth could find. Or Garth had driven straight through since if he was honest he’d been happy when it appeared Sam had fallen to sleep. He just hadn’t been expecting the nightmare or Sam’s reaction to it or to Garth’s attempt to wake him.

_“‘Never, ever touch one of those boys if they’re asleep, idjit,’”_  Garth could hear Bobby Singer’s gruff voice in his head and he fully agreed with that advice since he still wasn’t certain how he’d come out of that without either crashing the car or getting his face broke since Sam woke up swinging and shouting for his brother.

Since waking up, the younger Winchester brother had just been getting visibly more and more on edge until now as Garth watched Sam slowly get out of the car he could see the guy was practically vibrating.

He just wasn’t sure if it was due to not knowing his brother’s condition, how they were going to get close enough to find Dean, or if it was something else since by now Garth had figured out this was where Sam had been attacked by the self-same duo of hunters who had Dean.

“Want me to go…” he began to ask when Sam merely walked, no, stalked was a better word, toward the diner’s doors and Garth hurried to catch up while praying someone in this town would talk to them before Sam decided to try a different type of persuasion.

Over the years, Garth had picked up a lot of rumors about Sam. Including the year he’d hunted without his brother. Those were the stories that he’d always hoped were wrong because as he’d heard it, the usual mellow, calm, likable boy he’d seen Dean nearly take a shotgun to a overly obsessive fan over had been a cold blooded hunter who’d do anything or kill anyone to get what he needed.

Bobby had tried to give an explanation over Sam’s behavior but as Garth watched Sam now, he wasn’t so certain that side had been totally dispersed.

Sam had sworn he’d never come back to this town or to this diner, much less the damn plantation that he’d eventually have to face. Stepping out of the muggy heat into the weak cool of the air conditioned diner reminded him far too much of that day and he needed to focus.

He needed to focus on finding his brother before Walt did too much or could reveal too much but in some way he figured Walt had already did too much since Sam could still hear the mocking words on his phone.

_“‘Hey, Sammy-boy, it looks like your big brother isn’t as good at protecting you or defending you like he was when you were fourteen. Hear that behind me? That’s Roy using his knife on Dean, just like he did you last year. Want to take a guess what else I have planned for him, Sam?_

_“‘I swore after your son of a bitch brother humiliated me when you were nothing but a punk ass brat who didn’t know enough to mind your own business that I’d make him bleed and I will. I’ll make him beg for us to kill him but first I’ll make him beg for you…just like I made you beg for him.’”_

“Sam?” Garth was nudging his arm when he noticed that Sam’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere but what worried him aside from all the looks they were getting was the way Sam’s fists were clenching along with the twitching muscle in his jaw, which he was guessing was a trait he and Dean shared. “Sam?”

“Hi, can I get you boys anything?” a petite young waitress with long black hair braided down her back had wondered up right about then with a polite smile at Garth then it seemed to blank out a second as her gaze shifted to Sam and recognition hit only a second before she tried to cover it.

Sam, however, had already noticed both the waitress’s look and those of several others in the diner but his hazel eyes merely looked down at her. “Yeah, Donna, you can get me the same thing I asked for the last time I was in here a year ago…before you slipped something in the coffee,” he looked around the diner as a couple men began to stand but he kept staring at the now nervous waitress. “Only this time, they have my brother and I’m not leaving here without him.”

“Ooooh, boy,” Garth whispered, wondering his odds of talking them out of this when the taller man suddenly lunged right for Sam. “Shit, shit, shit! Sam, look…” he began to shout only to see that his warning wasn’t needed. “…out.”

Fully expecting what was probably going to happen, Sam had been prepared so when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye he quickly stepped around the now backpedaling waitress to grab the arm of the man advancing with a knife to slam it down onto the countertop.

The blade clattered to the floor and so did the man after his head collided with the countertop a few times, dropping him to the floor Sam was shifting to face the next attacker only to see that Garth had pulled his weapon to discourage any further attacks on Sam…then the sound of a shotgun pumping caused both hunters to tense.

“ _Sonuvabitch_ ,”  Sam muttered with out realizing how close to sounding like his brother he’d come with that oath, turning to look down at a short, old black woman with wizened features, pure white hair and seeming fully at ease while wielding the battered gun.

“I can fill you so full of buckshot you’d be leaking rainwater come Judgment Day, boy,” she rasped, having to blink from behind thick glasses.

Hearing Garth hiss a warning, Sam cocked his head while considering. He knew he could disarm the old woman without issue but didn’t. Rather he stayed still but couldn’t help the small smile that came despite his current circumstances. “You certainly wouldn’t be the first to say that to me…or to try,” he replied calmly, slowly lowering his hands to show he wasn’t a threat. “Of course, I’ve already did the whole Judgment Day thing myself and would really rather not leak anything until I’ve gotten my brother back.”

“Hah! You got guts for a Yankee, I’ll give you that,” she suddenly decided, shifting the shotgun to aim it toward the floor while peering owlishly at Garth. “He ever shoot that thing without it knockin’ him on his ass?”

“Not sure but I hope it doesn’t,” Sam hadn’t considered that but chose to ignore it as the old woman, who was clearly in charge of the diner, snapped something in a language Sam didn’t know, and slowly most of the crowd dispersed but the waitress and a couple older men who went back to their lunch. “I’m Sam…”

Waving a hand with a short laugh, she headed toward the counter where she deftly hopped onto a stool while nodding to the hunters to join her.

“I know who you are, Sam,” she cut him off then laughed at Garth’s look of shock and Sam’s more cautious look, reaching over to lightly lay a hand over Sam’s wrist. “I’ve been expecting you, child.”

“This good?” Garth asked out of the side of his mouth, knowing that too many people were trying to set the Winchesters up to take this old woman at face value.

Sam wasn’t certain but he’d felt the warmth on his wrist and just as quickly felt some of his tension easing away. “What are you?” he asked plainly, ignoring Garth’s blank stare or the waitress, Donna’s small gasp.

“No friend of those you seek, that’s for sure, boy,” the older woman cackled, patting his hand again then aimed a pointed frown at Donna until she was handed a bottle of whiskey that she poured in his coffee. “My name is Mama Celeste in these parts. I take care of the bayous needs for more years than any of us care to recall and many a spirit speak to me,” she lowered her thick glasses enough to show Sam that in reality she didn’t need them because she was blind.

“Many spirits speak to me and a few these days have been speaking about you and that devil-may-care brother you have lookin’ after you,” she grinned as if knowing Sam was rolling his eyes. “She spoke to me just last night that you’d be coming with this little fella to clean up my bayou of the filth that’s been in it far too long.”

Garth was about to speak when Sam gave him a look to wait then focused on the old woman. “Who spoke to you?” he asked, still leery about trusting this and then laughed at himself silently since he’d always harped at Dean for being too mistrustful.

“Your Mama, Sam,” Mama Celeste replied softly, squeezing his wrist when she felt him go rigid. “Pretty girl with too much sadness but she said you were coming and that you needed help but I don’t think it’s the kind of help you think you need.”

“I came here a year ago looking for a way to help my brother and I was jumped. Now they set my brother up and I need to find him, but my memory is spotty thanks to the drug I was hit with before the attack,” Sam’s eyes slid to the clearly uneasy waitress. “I need to find my brother. He came here because I told him something I shouldn’t have and…”

Clucking her tongue at him, she shook her head. “It was meant to be. You think your brother doesn’t trust you and that’s why he did this crazy thing alone and without you. Dean did this alone so you wouldn’t be hurt. He knows you were hurt before and he’s trying to make up for it, but he does need you now. Maybe even more than he thinks,” she nodded, shifting a casual look toward the front of the diner.

 “As for needing help finding him? Honey, that’s no trouble at all,” she offered a knowing smile then lifted a hand as the door opened to greet whoever entered. “Afternoon, Roy. Here for the usual?” she asked while once again squeezing the now tense wrist under her hand and speaking softly. “Just don’t go busting up my place too badly, ya hear?”

Sam understood that part at least and was slowly easing away from the counter and away from Garth who had quickly clued in to what was happening and had began moving even as Roy was exchanging greetings from others in the diner.

“In a hurry today, Donna,” he went to offer a fake smile to the waitress when he bumped into someone he hadn’t seen standing there since he was still distracted from the chore of hauling the bags of lye into the truck. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see…”

“Hey, Roy,” Sam greeted softly, his tone dropping to one he nearly didn’t recognize as his own but reminded him of his Dad when John was barking orders or Dean’s really, honestly pissed off tone. He waited a beat for the man’s head to snap up at the use of his name, recognition still not there until Sam spoke again. “Remember me?”

Clearing his fuddled brain at the hard tone and looking up at the taller man with ice cold hazel eyes that if looks could kill he’d be dead, Roy’s thoughts cleared and recognition came as all the color fled from his face as he also realized what this meant. “Sam,” he gaped, taking a step back as if planning to bolt when the sound of Garth’s weapon being cocked reached his ears. “You…you came…you’re here,”

Stumbling over words as his heart pounded, Roy knew he needed to get out of the diner when for the first time since he and Walt essentially moved into the old plantation and Walt had made it clear to the locals what would happen if they messed with them he noticed that the locals who were in the diner seemed to be blocking the door.

“You and Walt have my brother, Roy. You blackmailed a man who was there while I was growing up to get to us here and now Walt thinks he can threaten Dean to hurt me or vice versa?” Sam’s smile wasn’t the open kind one he usually offered, it was one he himself hadn’t used but the one he could bet he did that time he was without a soul.

“You laughed at what he did to me, you tied the damn straps on and rubbed salt water in every goddamn cut he made,” Sam took a step forward, reaching out with a quick grab to snatch Roy up by the front of his shirt and yank him up closer to his face. “You used that same goddamn blade on my brother while Walt called me. You hurt him and think I wouldn’t come?” fist tightening, his thoughts were back in that cabin and on what his older brother could be going through now. “You and Walt think I’m a freak for what you’ve heard? You seriously want to see the kind of freak I can be, you son of a bitch?”

Garth had looked away to check on the locals when he noticed Sam’s change in voice. “Sam?” he glanced back to see more than just rage or hate fueling Sam, he saw fear also.

Fear that they were too late to help Dean. That once again he’d failed his brother which was something Sam had sworn never to do again.

Still holding a struggling Roy easily with one hand, Sam had pulled a knife his Dad had given him years ago out and saw that Roy had begun to understand what was happening. “You enjoyed using that on me…on Dean? I won’t do what you did because my brother taught me a lot but he never taught me that so…”

“Wait!” scrambling to buy time or anything now, Roy tried to free himself but Sam’s grip was like steel. It was with the fear of knowing that Sam was deadly serious that he finally snapped. “He’s dead!”

 

** TBC **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is happening back with Dean and Walt? Does Roy know something we don’t? I apologize for any formatting errors. I’m still figuring AO3 out.


	4. Chapter Four

“He’s dead!”

Silence had fallen over the small diner at Roy’s unexpected outburst. Sam’s whole mind and body felt numb at the very thought.

Dropping Roy, Sam stumbled a little until gentle hands seemed to support him as Mama Celeste’s rubbed his arm while seeming to talk under her breath in that same language he didn’t know.

“No,” he whispered, feeling like he did the same night Dean had gone to Hell and he was powerless to stop it. Then a switch was snapped and his gaze shot to Roy who had tried to get up, to run, only to have Garth trip him and sit on him with his gun pointed in his face. “You’re lying.”

Sweating, Roy was trying to think of anything to keep Sam away from him when the hilt of Garth’s weapon tapped him on the forehead in a not so gentle way.

“You just told a guy who’s ready to kill you that his brother’s dead. Uh, not a bright way to increase your odds of living out the day,” he pointed out, rolling his eyes and adding. “And people think I’m dumb? They need to meet this guy.”

“No, I didn’t mean dead yet but…” Roy’s brain had just kicked back in and shot a hopeful look up at Sam. “…but if I don’t go back, he will be. Walt’ll know something’s wrong if I don’t go back and…what?” he was confused by Sam’s smile and by the way Garth was muttering about idjits.

Sam crouched down, pulling his own handgun to aim it at the sweating hunter’s face. “Oh, you’re going back, Roy,” he agreed, then paused to place the barrel of the gun to Roy’s temple. “You’re taking Garth and me right to Walt and my brother and for your sake, you damn well better pray that sociopathic bastard you play with didn’t hurt Dean like he tried to do to me before Jeff came cause then all bets are off and I fall back on a side I prayed was long gone.”

Standing, he turned to look down at the old woman who seemed to be waiting for his attention. “He is lying…right?” he asked quietly, needing to believe that he still had time since Dean had done this for him.

“You’re brother hasn’t crossed from this world, Sam,” she assured him, not seeing any reason to tell him the rest if they could avoid it. “Be careful though. That one is one is more dangerous than he looks,” she warned then reached for Sam’s hand to press something in it. “Take this. He’ll know what to do with it when the time comes but Sam? Don’t lose sight of yourself because you are not that man any longer.”

Knowing what she meant, Sam wished he was as sure of that as she seemed to be since he wasn’t too sure what side of himself he’d up calling on before the end of all this. “Right now, I just want my brother and to get that if I have to fall back on that side of me…then I will,” he hesitated a moment. “I’ve lost Dean so many times, whether by his fault or mine. I can’t let go this time. They made me do that before and I won’t run again.”

“Park your car somewhere, grab the gear,” Sam told Garth while he reached down to yank Roy up by the collar. “We’re riding back with him and Roy?” he gave a hard jerk on the other hunter’s arm. “You try to screw me, you cost me my brother and this time I will kill you.”

Deciding it best to follow along for the moment and try to wait for a better time to either warn Walt or get the jump on Sam and Garth, Roy bit his lip as they neared the truck and he heard Sam suck in a breath at the lye and bleach. “Umm, this is for…”

“Shutting up would be best for you,” Garth broke in, having a bad feeling about what those items had been for and praying that Sam held it together for just a little while longer. “We’re gonna get him back, Sam. We will,” he promised, pulling the battered trucker’s cap he’d taken from his trunk on and made certain it was sitting correctly since he knew that was a big thing to the Winchesters because this had been Bobby’s cap. “Cause if we don’t, I’ll get haunted one night just so Bobby can kick my ass six ways to Sunday for not backing you guys up.”

Hands shaking as he touched the wheel, Roy’s mind was whirling with possible ways to escape or prevent this when the handgun that was still aimed at him cocked meaningfully and he put the truck in gear.

“Sam…I didn’t know that Walt had personal issues with Dean,” he spoke up after a couple minutes of tense silence except for the low whistling Garth was doing from where he was squeezed in against the door. “I mean, I didn’t know that Walt’s issues with you guys went back to when you were a kid or…”

Already on edge and dealing with memories he didn’t need or want right then, Sam’s hand tightened on his pistol while he hard eyes seemed to go ice cold. “Bad topic if you don’t want this to end real quick for you,” he warned softly, feeling Garth’s eyes and hoping the small hunter didn’t start asking questions.

Sam knew the time Roy meant but hadn’t known until what Walt said on the phone that Dean had gone after the hunter.

He’d just turned fourteen and was just starting the growth spurt that his brother still bitched about when that incident had happened. Sam recalled getting stuck at the motel because his Dad had actually said it was too dangerous for him to go.

Little did John know that it would turn out more dangerous for Sam to stay behind because even as fourteen Sam would jump if he saw something happening that was wrong and that’s what he did when he’d come back from getting a soda at the machine in the motel office to hear the screams from behind the building.

His memory was spotty after he’d pulled his knife, the very knife he had on him today, to try to warn Walt away from a girl probably not yet twenty. Sam knew he’d cut Walt but he hadn’t been quick enough to dodge the rock that Walt threw and then once he felt the needle in his neck, his memories of what happened next were thin except for pain, blood and barely knowing where he was when he heard his brother’s outraged voice.

Sam had drifted in and out of consciousness and figured he’d had a concussion. Dean had been there for the most of it, in fact it had been his brother who had cleaned and dressed the wounds while trying to make sense out of what Sam figured was probably nothing but babble since he couldn’t seem to recall telling his brother what Walt was doing or what he’d done but did hear Dean repeating his favorite phrase of ‘ _sonuvabitch_ ’ over and over.

“Your pal gets pissed when he doesn’t get what he wants but you guys really should’ve taken Dean’s advice after the motel cause Dean already hates Walt so between getting shot by him and now all this…won’t make my brother any happier with him,” Sam remarked, feeling his fingers shake a little as the truck turned down an all dirt, weed and tree covered path that he knew by some instinct would lead to both the old plantation and more importantly to Sam to the old keeper’s cabin where he’d spent a week being tortured by these two assholes and where his brother had been for the past twenty four hours.

“What’s the plan exactly?” Garth decided to ask since Sam clearly in the mood to be open about it. “We do have a plan right?”

“Dean usually makes those,” Sam muttered then sighed at Garth’s choke. “I know they aren’t always the greatest but they normally work.”

Garth was all too familiar with Dean’s plans since they normally involved something illegal or jumping in feet first. He’d been hoping Sam would have a different take on the subject but guessed he shouldn’t have hoped that considering what they were doing.

“Basic plan, you watch Roy while I go, find my brother, put a 9mm round in every damn major body part Walt has just to take him down, and once I see how bad Dean’s hurt I make the son of a bitch bleed,” Sam decided easily, figuring that plan made perfect sense to him.

Eyes already huge, now they were close to jumping out of his skull as Garth finally guessed that he was in way over his head and had no chance in hell of controlling Sam if he got even close to Walt and his brother was hurt too seriously.

“Sam, no offense, but I thought you were supposed to be the more mellow and calm one?” Garth couldn’t help but ask it but before a reply could be given the truck suddenly swerved off the muddy pathway and straight toward a tree. “Hey!”

Roy had grown desperate as he drove closer back to the cabin, having heard Sam’s choice of action and knowing how badly Dean had been hurt before he’d left, he’d taken what he saw as his only way out. “Walt’ll kill him before you can even find the cabin, asshole!” he yelled, pushing the gas pedal even harder to force the truck to speed up.

 Sam was grabbing for the wheel in hopes to avoid the collision when the truck slammed into a large old tree and he heard the same sound he could recall hearing the night a semi slammed into the Impala then things were going dark.

** Back at the cabin, a little while earlier: **

“Well, looks like it’s just you and me, hotshot,” Walt seemed more than thrilled with the idea of not having Roy around for the next round. “What do you think I’m gonna do now?”

“Bore me to death?” Dean offered his best smirk even though the pain he was in was starting to make the care less attitude and shit eating smirk harder to drum up.

Dean had no doubt that now that Roy was gone the more vicious side of Walt would emerge. His head was already cracked open, his vision still swam, and he figured he had slightly less cuts on his body as he would get in a day on the rack with Alastair…these just had the added benefit of having some type of additive to make the cuts burn like acid.

He knew he had broken ribs from the repeated abuse to them. He just hoped he wasn’t bleeding internally but he couldn’t be sure and shrugged the blood he was tasting off to the abuse his face was taking.

Mouthing off to Walt wasn’t a wise move, Dean knew that, but he also knew he was running short on time and needed to provoke the bastard into making a mistake before either Roy got back or much worse in Dean’s opinion, Sam showed up.

“Still cocky, Dean?” a backhanded slap had the younger hunter’s head snapping to the side as Walt sat straddling a chair and lightly running the tip of his thumb over the jagged edge of the knife he’d been using on Dean. “What’s it gonna take to make you lose that? Maybe if I cut out your damn tongue?”

“Or you just get over yourself and finish this?” Dean replied with more disinterest than he felt.

Knowing how unstable Walt could be when not pushed to the breaking point, Dean chose to try one other dig and hoped he didn’t get the knife in the face or throat. “You don’t have the damn guts to kill me, Walt. You tried once and it didn’t work. You went after my brother more than once and how has that worked out for you? Face it. You will never be anything but a low class bully that Sammy on his worst day could take out without blinking.”

“Shut the hell up!” red rage suddenly flew all over the other man at that jab and he stood up so violently that he threw his chair across the room before lashing out with a kick to Dean’s chest that sent both hunter and chair crashing yet again to the hard floor before proceeding to give a series of kicks that left Dean gasping for breath and definitely tasting blood this time.

“You Winchesters think you’re so good? You’re nothing but freaks with a bastard for an old man who should’ve dealt with you both a lot more seriously than he did!” dropping to the floor to grab a handful of hair, he jerked Dean’s head up but missed the sharp look of anger in those green eyes. “You think your precious freak of a brother is better than me? Hell, Roy and I had him screaming and that was before I really started on him. If that old man hadn’t broken our agreement…”

Dean wasn’t stupid and had guessed who he was referring to but had more concerns right then than thinking why Jefferson had sold both him and Sam out to these two airheads. Working his bloodied fingers around what he’d painfully managed to reach, he fought the pain of both old and new wounds while letting Walt rant.

“The community still talks, Dean, and you and Sam are still huge topics…especially with that drunk old man no longer around to cover up for you,” Walt sneered, letting Dean’s hair go with a shove that slammed it into the floor but used the tip of the knife to dig into the shoulder that still showed the scar he’d gotten from the Benders years ago.

“You were MIA, Singer was dead and little Sam was all on his own but trying any way to find you. It was pretty easy to get Jeff to sell the kid out once I made it pretty clear what I knew about some crap he let did and could do with that knowledge.

“Sammy came fast enough when he thought someone down here had a way to find you but you should’ve seen his face when he saw Roy. Bastard still tried to fight and I’ll admit he could be dangerous since he managed to take Roy down until I slipped this baby in his neck again,” sneering, Walt held up a long hypodermic he’d had in is back pocket and waited until Dean’s gaze looked at it. “He’d already been drugged by the waitress at the diner so he was easy meat for me after that.”

Gritting his teeth as the knife was dipped in a solution of salt and whiskey, Dean knew the pain this cut would bring since he had plenty of those but it was the needle he was watching as the other man laid it aside to pick up another he had laying in a zippered case on a wooden table that held an assortment of things, some of which Dean hadn’t seen since his time in Hell.

“You know anything about drugs, hotshot?” Walt glanced back over his shoulder and down at Dean before lifting his chosen needle with a cold smirk. “Oh, I know. Too despicable for the perfect Dean Winchester to resort to using drugs…but then you just hunt dead things, right?”

Laughing, he came back over to crouch down with the needle held close to Dean’s face. “This one here? I used it on your boy toward the end. Didn’t feel like having Roy here for what I planned and this baby will knock you on your ass but you’d be awake to see and hear whatever I do. I’d used plenty of others on him before, the ones that would burn the veins until he screamed whatever I wanted to hear and I might use that on you before I shoot you up with this one.

“Your little brother begged, Dean. Not at first but after a few days of constant cutting, burning, drugs and no food or water…he broke and then things got fun,” looking over toward that metal table he seemed to be thinking back to what he’d done to the younger Winchester so he once again missed the change in Dean’s eyes or the way he seemed to be slightly shifting his still tied arms.

“Me and Roy still hunt but these days we hunt things that are a bit more fun. If Jefferson hadn’t showed up to pull Sam’s ass out of the fire I’d’ve run him to ground like I’ve done others since we came here but you need to hear the best part,” Walt stepped away, leaving both his knife and the needle on the floor as he grabbed a small micro cassette player. “This is when we had him on that table. When I scrawled that on his back while Roy gagged him and cut his arm…well, you’ll get the idea.”

Concentrating on what he was doing and not to pass out, Dean’s attention wasn’t completely on the player until he finally realized what Walt had said and that the raggedly soft voice that had the sound of someone who had tore his throat raw was the voice of his brother that his attention was instant and the anger that he’d pushed down back in a flash.

Listening to the brutal session, the recorder had been close enough to not only pick up on Sam’s agony, his now muffled screams as he was hurt but it also picked up the sounds only someone groomed in Hell’s torture rooms would understand.

Dean heard the sounds of knives slicing into flesh, he heard what he now knew was the sound of Sam’s restrained body struggling against the abuse and agony on that metal table only to be held down by both man and straps.

Finally he heard the sound of sizzle as something hot was placed against skin and the harsh, guttural moans stopped as Dean prayed his brother must have passed out finally then came the other sounds of laughing, of cruel mocking promises of what was yet to come and Dean was left to wonder just what the hell else Sam endured when the player clicked off.

Closing his eyes against the sudden burning, he forced himself to take as deep a breath as possible right then while he could hear where in the cabin Walt was as he planned what else to do to Dean and he knew it was time.

“So, you enjoy listening to what I did?” Walt chuckled, looking for his knife only to remember he’d left it on the floor. “Roy has some pictures on his phone. When he gets back and before I mix up that bleach and lye to use on you I’ll let you see ‘em.”

Noticing that Dean’s eyes were closed, the other man scowled. “Oh, no, no sleep, Winchester,” he growled, refusing to let the smart ass pass out when things were just getting good. “I’m no where close to being done with you so wake up.”

Reaching down to grab both his knife and a handful of hair to shake his captive back to consciousness, Walt was off balance and overconfident so was shocked when Dean’s head suddenly snapped forward to connect hard with his nose, causing blinding agony and rage as he fell back with a bloody nose.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Walt shouted, enraged. “I’ll do more to you for that than your brother even came close to having done to him!” he’d gone to grab for his knife only to grab thin air.

“Looking for this, asshole?”

Walt’s scowl, lessened by the amount of blood his nose was giving off, turned almost dumbfounded as he saw not only his knife in Dean’s hand but the hunter he’d been thrilled at torturing more was on his feet with a look that anyone who’d ever pissed Dean Winchester off knew best to avoid.

“No. How’d the hell…?” he stuttered, looking sideways for another weapon but still confident that he was faster than Dean given his injuries.

Body in agony and surprised that he was able to be on his feet, Dean chalked the last up to pure adrenaline since he’d used his rage and emotion in those last few moments to finish cutting the ropes off his wrists with the small but very sharp razorblade he’d taken to securing on the underside of his belt.

Once that was done, he used the time bought after smashing Walt’s nose to grab the knife laying close to him to slash the ropes binding his legs to the chair and then just waited for the overconfident moron to go for the blade.

Stepping on both the needle and the recorder, Dean’s ears could still hear his brother screaming and had used that rage as well as what else he’d kept stored up in order to get to a vertical position, now he hefted  the blade in his hand as  if testing its weight while offering his best smirk to the incredulous hunter.

“I’m not as stupid as everyone likes to think I am, Walt. I knew there was more to what happened to Sam than he was telling me,” Dean remarked, hard green eyes never leaving Walt’s while offering a slight shrug that hurt way more than he openly showed. “Granted this didn’t go down like I planned but I still got you tell me what I wanted to.

“You told me what else you and that little rat weasel pal of yours did to my little brother. Now, what d’ya say I do what I promised three years ago?” he smiled the smile that usually meant death to anyone who seen it because Dean’s rage, the pain he was in but wouldn’t show, and the fury at what these two so-called hunters had done to brother had pushed him back to a point that he thought he’d left behind in Hell. “Here, you can have this piece of shit. I have one of my own.”

Tossing the knife straight toward Walt, Dean used the distraction of the man scrambling out of the way of the blade and then to grab it to make a swift move to where he’d noticed his own weapons were tossed.

The drop and roll made his entire body scream but he came up with his Colt a moment before Walt’s hand touched the knife and was in perfect position to shoot had he wanted to take the man from behind but held off until Walt turned to jump only to freeze at the pistol aimed steadily.

“Bastard,” Walt hissed, gripping the blade tightly and not prepared to go down this easily. “Big man with a gun. You’re a coward not to face me down with that fancy blade you have…unless you’re as big a wuss as your brother and old man.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed dangerously then slowly slid the safety on before slipping the Colt into the back of his jeans and picking up the demon killing blade with a smirk, not sure if Walt was that cocky or just that stupid. “Mistake and that one will be your last,” he promised, not really caring anymore what people said of his Dad but calling Sam names would always be the quickest way to die and he’d just about had about of this asshole. “Bring it,” he invited, feeling the blood running from his wounds and knowing he needed to finish this and fast but was waiting when Walt lunged even as the sound of the cabin door slamming open was heard. “Shit.”

“Roy’s back, Winchester,” Walt sneered, tossing his blade into his other hand for what he knew would be an easy feint/strike against the weakening Winchester. “Guess I win.”

Dean knew he could handle Walt one on one but had doubts about dealing with both hunters in the shape he was in since he could now feel his legs wanting to buckle. Distracted just a little too much, he swore as the blade closed in past his face to slash across his chest as he jumped back, tripping as his head swum.

“ _Sonuvabitch_!” hissing as he felt himself falling, Dean wasn’t sure what happened next since he felt himself falling then just as quickly regained his balance to catch the wrist that had Walt’s next slash connected it would have killed Dean. “Don’t think so,” he gritted through clenched teeth, using his elbow to smash Walt’s face, twisted the wrist until the other blade dropped and felt his own blade go into the man’s chest.

“Ugh!” Walt grunted at the unexpected impact of sharp steel, his shocked eyes looking directly into Dean’s hard green ones. “You…”

Ignoring the feel of blood on his hand, Dean gave a final shove of the blade to twist it up to make certain that this would be the end of it. Keeping his gaze locked on Walt’s for a long moment, he finally pulled his knife free and let the bleeding hunter fall to the floor, blood pooling quickly.

“You made a mistake when Sam was fourteen. You made a bigger mistake three years ago. You made your last damn mistake this time by setting my brother up and for what you did,” Dean’s voice was hard, nearly toneless as he watched the life drain out of a man he’d been wanting to see dead for more years than even Sam suspected. “Third time was the charm and your last mistake, Walt.”

Blowing out a breath then groaning as pain surged, he was nearing exhaustion when footsteps coming reminded Dean that this wasn’t over yet and he had one other hunter to handle.

Dropping the knife for the moment to pull his Colt, Dean slipped off the safety in the same fluid motion as he pulled it and was aiming with his finger on the trigger to shoot whoever was rushing through the door to the back room.

“Hey, what’s…oh crap…! Dean, don’t shoot!” Garth had come running into the back room of the cabin once he’d found it.

He had his own weapon out since he’d been expecting to at least shoot Walt but hadn’t been expecting to see the bigger man lying in his own blood with a very badly injured, really pissed off and barely on his own two feet Dean Winchester aiming a pistol at him.

Garth had one quick instant to understand that Dean’s finger was depressing the trigger and that he had no clue who was coming in the room which told the little hunter that he was as good as dead.

 

** TBC **


	5. Chapter Five

** Earlier, outside after the crash: **

“Sam! Sam, wake up!”

The truck slamming into the truck had also sent Sam Winchester’s head colliding with the dashboard though he wasn’t certain how he managed not to go through the windshield.

His head ringing, Sam touched his forehead to feel blood tricking down into his eyes when he finally heard the voice shouting for him and memories snapped back.

He and Garth had been driving with a reluctant Roy back to the old cabin in hopes of finding Dean when the hunter suddenly swerved the truck, running it and them into a tree.

Now Sam had no clue where Roy or Garth was but he recognized Garth’s voice as the one shouting for him so he started there.

“Garth?” noticing that both doors were open, he pulled himself out only to have to grab onto the door for support as his head spun when he caught site of movement farther down the muddy path. “Shit. Garth!”

“Watch out! The dingbat’s got a…” Garth winced as a shot fired and zinged off the truck cab, two inches from Sam’s head. “…gun.”

Ducking on instinct, Sam felt the breeze of the bullet and dropped fully so he could go around the front of the truck, easing his head out far enough to see where Garth was located then tried to place where the wild shots were coming from.

Realizing that it must be his weapon that Roy had grabbed after bailing out of the wrecked truck, Sam was offering some choice words silently to himself.

Among the first rules Dean or their Dad had ever taught him was never to lose control of his weapon or this very thing could happen. “Garth! You okay?” he called, buying time to figure out a way around to where it seemed Roy had taken refuge behind a large overturned ancient tree that looked like it had been uprooted.

“Peachy,” came the short reply and it was something in near sarcastic, which Garth hardly ever used, tone to the choice of words that almost made Sam laugh.

His brother had shot that reply back at him in Jericho, the night they’d been forced to dive from the Centennial Bridge after the Woman in White had taken control of the Impala.

“Roy! Give it up!” Sam yelled out, wincing when his head seemed to take offense to the loud voice. “Walt’s been using you for years. Dying for him really worth it?” he asked, flipping a mental coin to make a lesser of two evils choice. “Toss out the gun, come out and…you can go. Get out of here, start over.”

Garth was eyeing something he could see reflecting off some branches near Roy while debating on the wise ness of taking a shot and missing Roy but hitting what he suspected he was seeing when he nearly jerked his head off at Sam’s words. “Huh? Shooting gun, nailed you and Dean and you want to let him go?” he stared openly. “How hard you’d hit your head, Sam?”

“Lesser of two evils,” Sam replied, slashing blood out of his eyes and using the lull in shooting to make a quick move from the truck to behind a not so sturdy looking tree which seemed to line the road up to the main house and where he knew the smaller cabin. “Roy’s guilty as sin but it’s Walt we want and…damn!”

A crack sounded as a bullet fired, striking Sam’s shoulder as it went through the tree, shoulder and out again. “I’m dead either way, asshole!” Roy’s voice was higher now, more screechy; a sure sign of his panic since he’d gotten used to having Walt to back him up.

“You think I’m stupid enough to think you’ll let me live? I was there when Walt shot you three years ago! I was here when we nailed you! I did as much to you as Walt in some cases but more to the point…I’m the one who ripped a knife into your big brother then doused that open wound with pure salt/whiskey!” he yelled, knowing he was a dead man if not from Sam then from something else since he could feel eyes on him even then.

“Oy,” Garth muttered, figuring this guy had a death wish if he was even saying that to an already pissed off Sam. “Sam…”

Glancing away from his bleeding shoulder, Sam felt his blood run cold but wasn’t certain if it was from shock or knowing what that could mean since he was well aware of what Roy and Walt were capable of. “I thought Dean was an issue for Walt.”

Accepting his fate and determined to buy Walt time to finish Dean, Roy peeked through the underbrush to see if he had an open shot when he saw something else. “Your dumb ass brother kept baiting Walt, Sam. He didn’t know enough to just give in, give Walt what he wanted and maybe we would’ve killed him by now,” he eased up slowly to move some branches away from what he assumed was the Winchester’s precious car.

“He tried not yell or scream but you heard how that went when Walt called you to rub it in your face what a loser your big brother was in reality,” since no one was firing back at him and he knew Sam was hurt both from the wreck and probably a bullet and he had little faith that Garth was a true threat, Roy got a little more arrogant in his taunts.

“Pretty sure by now Walt’s let Dean listen to that recorder he made of our time with you. Oh, you didn’t beg as much as what Walt told Dean but I bet he’s finally gotten Dean to. Walt’s got a few more drugs and some new toys he was dying to use on him,” trying the Impala’s door only to find it locked, the hunter scowled while wiping blood from where his face hit the steering wheel then used his elbow to break the driver’s window out. “Guess your big brother isn’t quite as tough as you…huh?”

Blinking in surprise at the bloody fingers that gripped his wrist as it was just about to reach inside the car, his head swung around only to grunt when his head bounced off the roof.

“Throwing it up to me about what you two jackasses did to my brother is one thing,” Sam had buried the rage that had started to burn in his heart and used the time that Roy was shouting taunts to ease from behind cover and get close enough to the hunter’s hiding spot just in time to hear glass smash and knew on some deep instinct what had just happened. “Touching Dean’s car? Hell, you’d be better off letting me kill you since Dean will rip you apart for that alone.”

Having dropped the gun he’d grabbed when escaping the truck, Roy fell back after his head hit the roof but was still alert enough to kick out and knew he’d hit Sam when he heard the curse. Scrambling to his feet, he reached into his jacket to look for anything that he could use as a weapon when his fingers closed around his phone.

“Dean might not’ve been dead before but I can promise Walt’s either killed him by now or is making him wish to God he was…or maybe he’d left him alive just enough to beg you to kill him,” Roy spat, throwing his phone before bolting further into the brush covered plantation but away from the cabin. “You think your big brother is perfect! That he’s so tough! He ain’t nothin’ more than me and Roy, only he gets away with it!”

Garth ran up, missing the few shots he took and swore at the thought of tracking Roy down in either the overgrown plantation grounds or anywhere in the swamp. “Damn. Maybe he’ll be lucky and get ate by something,” he mused upon seeing the broken window and knowing by Bobby’s detailed rules of Winchester that Dean would killed for two things: his brother and his car.

“Sam?” the little hunter looked up when he didn’t get a response but heard the raspy breathing as Sam struggled to breathe and with true alarm, Garth was instantly looking for more wounds that he could openly see but then noticed the phone in Sam’s clenched fingers and thought back to a few things he’d heard. “Shit.”

 

The desperate kick had hit Sam’s knee, dropping him to the wet ground. He’d picked up his weapon and had been about to try to stand to deal with Roy in one manner or another when the phone had been tossed at him as a way to distract him as Roy took off running in the opposite direction of the cabin, which told Sam that he wanted to lead him and Garth into the swamp and away from what Sam really wanted.

Catching the phone, Sam was about to drop it in the Impala or toss it to Garth when his eyes looked down and the pain in his head, shoulder, and knee vanished as it felt like he’d been kicked in the gut.

Roy had been smart enough to open his phone to the photos stored on it and called up one that showed Sam an image of Walt, bloody knife in hand, leaning over a clearly bloody and hurt Dean.

Flipping through the images, Sam’s inner voice was telling him to stop looking, that he knew they’d get worse but he couldn’t stop until finally he got to one that turned his stomach and his fist clenched until plastic crunched before fingers reached to remove the offending item.

“Which way?” Garth needed to bring Sam back to reality but even a quick look at the phone before he pocketed it for later destruction at someone’s hands told him that was not going to be an easy task. “You wanna let Roy go or…Sam?”

The burning rage he’d been feeling lit with a combination of Roy’s taunts and those images. Sam’s hunter side knew with exacting certainty what he was going to do.

Using the broken window to reach in to pop the trunk, Sam went to the back and quickly began to rummage through the weapons until he found extra ammo for his weapon, a different knife with a more curved blade while tossing Garth a sawed-off shotgun.

“Go find Dean,” he ordered tonelessly, hard eyes staring at the path Roy had taken and gauging a way to cut him off.

“Say huh?” Garth stared at the shotgun then up at Sam and could feel the hate and rage pouring off of him. “Sam, you go after Dean and I’ll…”

Looking down, Sam had to blink several times to bring Garth into focus then he seemed to consider his next words. “I want to go after Dean more than anything, Garth. I do,” he admitted, voice shaking in emotions that he couldn’t find a way to express to someone not his brother until finally he looked back to the way Roy had gone.

“Five years ago I watched my brother literally tore to shreds by hellhounds. I watched my brother die and couldn’t stop it. I…I don’t think I can find him like that again and if even half of what Roy said is true and Dean is…” Sam had to stop, he couldn’t say those words much less think them so he forced those emotions aside to allow others back in.

Sam had always known the type of hunter his father had wanted, had tried to train him to be and not until the time he’d been without a soul did Sam understand that meant to set aside all his feelings, his moralities and just do the job.

He accepted that perhaps that side had made him a better hunter but that side had also scared Sam when he’d been forced to confront it in his mind. Now, he was stepping back into the frame of mind one more time because he was not letting Roy leave this plantation after he’d seen those photos and could still hear the call from Walt.

“Find my brother and get him outta here, Garth. I’ll handle the rest,” he promised, voice colder and much more lethal than Garth had ever thought possible from this Winchester. “Don’t wait for me either.”

Not liking the tone or the words that last line put every sense of alarm Garth had on overdrive but he was unable to stop Sam as he took off into the woods at a speed and with an agility that reminded him that the Winchesters had been doing this crap a lot longer than he had.

“Balls!” he cursed, using one of his new favorite phrases then gripped the shotgun then heard a weapon being discharged and took off running in the hopes that he could save at least one Winchester that day while missing a shadow that seemed to be watching from the heavy tree line.

** Present, the cabin: **

“Whoa! Wait a minute! Dean!”

Having only a brief moment to take the scene in the back room of the run down cabin in before he realized the threat he was in, Garth skittered to a running stop while hoping something in his voice registered with a fully in the moment, fully pissed off and very hurt Dean Winchester.

Expecting Roy to have come back finally, Dean was on the last of his energy after dealing with Walt so he knew he had once shot to deal with the other sadistic son of a bitch before he passed out.

Two things slowly hit home that made him pause in pulling the trigger fully. The fact that his aim should’ve put the Colt at shoulder height for Roy but yet Dean’s wavering vision didn’t see that and then the alarmed voice was way too high to be Roy as it shouted his name.

Hesitating, Dean made himself look and then look down, almost positive the shock he was in on top of the blows to his head had started making him hallucinate. “…Garth?” he stared at the little hunter. “That you?”

“No, I’m a damn Fraggle. Of course it’s me,” Garth replied, realizing he was actually getting short tempered and beginning to understand why Bobby might have been so grumpy at times. “Can you put that down?”

Realizing he was still holding the Colt, Dean lowered it then felt his vision going gray only a moment before Garth was grabbing for him. “ _Sonuvabitch_ ,” he muttered, beginning to feel the effects of the past few days as shock, blood loss, head trauma and lack of food, water, and sleep reminded him that he was on his last legs. “That bastard dead?”

Dean’s voice was more slurred than Garth liked and he didn’t like the amount of bruises, cuts, burns, and other wounds that he could see on the man.

Looking toward the body laying in a pool of blood, Garth had to swallow hard since while he was a hunter he really didn’t care for blood.

“Yeah, he’s bought the farm,” he confirmed, kneeling down to look closer at Dean’s eyes while reaching for a bottle of water he’d grabbed. “Drink this.”

Drinking the water more slowly than he felt like, Dean let his eyes close for a moment then gasped as pain shot through his arm as Garth probed. “You wanna die?” he growled, looking up through cloudy eyes. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded, thinking hard. “Roy should…”

“Can you stand?” Garth was suddenly urgent but not certain how the hell he was going to get the taller hunter back to the Impala much less how he’d handle Sam in the state he was in. “I gotta get you outta here then find Sam and…Dean!”

Hand shooting out to grab Garth by the front of his jacket, Dean jerked him back down to eye level because even in agony, feeling like crap and about ready to pass out the use of his brother’s name was enough to snap Dean back to attention and bring back the fire in his eyes.

“Come again? What the hell’re you talking about, Garth?” he demanded, voice dropping to the low and dangerous one he used when hunting or when pissed…or when Sam might be in trouble. “Where’s Sam? What in the hell are you two doing here and again, where’s Sam?”

Wondering silently why he even thought that getting Dean out of the cabin and back to the Impala without a fight would happen, Garth had to struggle a little to get the grip to loosen so he could attempt to get Dean up but gave up with a muttered curse.

“What do you think Sam’s doing here?” he countered, figuring out that the elder Winchester wasn’t moving until he got answers he gave up and turned his attention to the room. “Sam showed up in my face when he figured out what you’d done. We came here, snagged Roy then it all went South after the dingbat wrecked the truck, shot Sam, showed him something on the phone here then ran into the swamp.”

Garth missed the change in Dean’s eyes or the way his jaw twitched at the words ‘shot Sam’ then held out the phone. “Sam took off after Roy and Dean…” he hesitated a second to add. “I knew you could be scary when pissed off but Sam’s beyond scary when he’d pissed and…I can’t…bring him down this time.”

Looking at the photos gave Dean an idea of what happened but then something Walt mentioned made him look farther back in the stored photos until he came across the ones of what happened to Sam.

He viewed each photo with a slow burn then dropped the phone on the floor to smash it under his heel, refusing to ever allow Sam to see those again.

“I hope you burn, asshole,” he spoke to Walt’s body when suddenly Garth’s statement hit him and Dean’s eyes snapped up. “How far gone is he?” he demanded, not needing any better explanation for the hunter’s description of Sam since Dean feared he knew what side of Sam might’ve surfaced while being forced to deal with this.

Pausing to understand the question, Garth’s eyes rolled and he lifted his hand as high above his head as he could reach. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate him….a billion,” he expected to see surprise or something on Dean but frowned when he only received a steady stare as if the older brother wasn’t fully surprised. “His voice is totally different and…he’d scare Bobby, Dean.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Dean knew however and swore, pulling himself to his feet and knowing he needed to get to Sam.

He’d kept one promise and he’d be damned if he’d break another over this crap. “We’ll burn this place later. I need to find Sam and Roy before it’s too late.”

“Too late?” Garth scoffed, not certain what Dean meant but scrambled to catch up after Dean located what was left of his shirt, his jacket and weapons. “I’m pretty sure Roy signed his fate a long time ago and Sam should be able to handle him so…”

“Sam handling Roy isn’t the issue,” Dean replied, wincing and fighting the pain as he stepped from the cabin to look around, trying to figure out a path to take. “He can wipe the floor with that asshole on his worst day but I don’t want him doing it now.”

Knowing which way he’d come and which way he’d last seen Roy and Sam heading, Garth pointed it out to Dean who merely grunted but took the path more quickly than Garth had expected considering his wounds. “I’d already bet with myself that Sam would take Roy out and that was before the moron popped off about you and…”

“Damn it,” Dean hissed, not liking that because he knew Sam and knew if his little brother was in the frame of mind he feared he was it wouldn’t take much to push him past limits that even Dean had trouble handling. Ones that he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to face again once Sam got his soul restored. “Sammy has a side that I’d hoped stayed buried,” he tried to explain without too many details. “It used to take a lot to bring that out since little brother wears his heart on his sleeve but when he’d scared, or tired, or I’m hurt too bad and he isn’t sure what’ll happen then it comes to the surface. Sam’s got too much on his plate now to let these two bring that out in him.”

“We met a woman in the diner who seemed to know Sam was coming,” this time Garth did see the way Dean tensed but didn’t comment when they both heard sounds off in the distant. “Ohh, boy.”

Dean recognized the sounds better than Garth did. All Garth knew or expected was Sam out of control with rage and fury. He, on the other hand, knew better now that he had a sound to go on.

Almost fearing that Sam had allowed the pure hunter in him to come back to the surface the sounds from further off in the swamps relieved some of that worry. If only a little since dealing with Sam in this stage wasn’t any easier than dealing with T2 had been.

“We get close, you pin Roy down until I deal with him but stay away from Sam,” he warned the other hunter, wishing he could do this without either Garth or Roy being present.

“Dude, I’ve been hung on a coat rack by your brother and seen him go ice cold, kill you to look at you so no worries there,” Garth assured him, considering before holding out the shotgun. “You want this?”

Hefting his Colt, Dean shook his head. “You hang on to that and…” an unexpected scream cut him off and suddenly his only concern was getting to his brother and making someone else bleed. “Sammy.”

** Elsewhere on the Plantation Grounds: **

Even a short sprint told Sam that the old grounds were not made for running or chasing someone. The recent rains, the ever encroaching swamps and the overgrown trees and bushes seemed determined to slow him down in his pursuit of Roy.

The running hunter wasn’t even trying to escape into the swamplands or try to hide his trail as he run in a zig-zag pattern but as Sam soon realized he was trying to lead Sam closer to the old plantation house.

Now that he cleared the largest mass of trees and the large Antebellum mansion came into view, something about the run down and collapsing pre-Civil War era mansion tugged his memory but right then his thoughts were too focused to try to know why.

“Damn it, Roy,” he muttered, needing to stop to allow his head to stop spinning since the exertion of tracking Roy had caused the wound on his head to start bleeding again and he’d done the best he could to stop the blood from the bullet wound in his shoulder.

Feeling eyes on him, Sam shifted his gaze toward the feeling and thought for just a moment he’d seen a pair of yellow eyes staring at him but then as quickly as it took him to blink they were gone. “Just in shock, Sam,” he told himself, pushing himself back upright and focusing harder on his job and not on anything else.

Sam ignored the nausea, he ignored the pain and made himself focus on the anger he felt. Anger that his brother had been hurt yet again doing something alone rather than involve Sam in order to keep him safe.

“I told him he wasn’t just a grunt. I forgot to include the part where he wasn’t invincible either,” he muttered under his breath, kneeling down when he noticed something in the mud which saved his life as a heavy branch swung as his head.

Goddamn it!” Roy had been running, hoping to either lose Sam in the maze of pathways or maybe lead him to the swamp until he could double back to find Walt.

Realizing the boy was a better tracker than he’d thought, he’d grabbed a heavy oak branch that was sturdy and planned to use it as a club to stun Sam enough that he could then use the blade he had in his boot or even one of Winchester’s own weapons.

Once the swing missed, Roy was off balance and grunted as Sam’s already bleeding shoulder slammed into his midsection with force enough to push him back. “Why don’t you just give up?” he yelled, frustrated that so easy a thing had gone so wrong.

Pain singing through his arm but moving on instincts learned long ago, Sam was shifting to one side to swing and come up with his knife held ready but grunted when the branch hit his wrist, making the blade fall into the mud.

“You honestly thought Dean wouldn’t eventually come after you and Walt?” that was too funny since even Sam had been shocked that his brother hadn’t made this move already. “My brother doesn’t give up, Roy. I didn’t mean to tell him about what happened down here because I didn’t want him doing what he did and now I’ll pay for it,” he prayed silently that Dean’s efforts to keep that damn promise and to make Walt pay for attacking Sam hadn’t gotten him killed.

“Stupid!” Roy swung the branch again, this time seeing how off balance Sam seemed to be getting and altered his aim at the last moment to hit Sam’s already injured knee. “I meant you! Why the hell don’t you just give up? Why’d you have to show up and ruin it all?”

Unable to support himself at the blow to his knee, Sam dropped but was able to catch the branch before the next strike could smash his skull in then frowned at the question. “He’s my brother. I’d die for him.”

The answer was so simple to Sam even now, even after all they’d been through and will probably still face. He’d die for Dean and suddenly Sam understood that was why his brother had come to Louisiana alone.

“Hope it was worth it then, freak,” Roy hissed, letting the branch go to use a closed fist to hit Sam in the face while yanking his boot knife free. “You’re gonna die for a son of a bitch who’s no matter than Walt only my friend isn’t some freakin’ vampire lover like your brother!” he shot, slashing the knife at Sam’s exposed throat as he struggled to regain his vision and didn’t see the blade coming until it was too late to move.

 

****

** TBC **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, Roy does seem to be asking for a slow death, doesn’t he? Think Dean and Garth will arrive in time? Who is watching from the shadows?


	6. Chapter Six

Stunned from the blow to the face, Sam caught sight of the blade a second before he knew it would cut his throat open.

Long ago learned instincts made him try to block it or even catch Roy’s hand when the next few moments seemed strange to him.

A strange high pitched screech of some kind seemed to come out of either the plantation house or the swamp which startled Roy enough that his arm went to the side, missing Sam’s throat. Then he went forward as something seemed to hit him in the back of the neck.

“Shit!” with a hiss, he jerked whatever it was out to toss it into the mud but didn’t have time to make another move at Sam since he’d taken advantage of whatever the hell was happening to grab the wrist with the knife, twist hard and shift his body at the same time to knock Roy off of him and onto the ground. “Hey!”

“My brother is _nothing_ like you or Walt!” Sam snapped, angrier that Roy had dared to even compare Dean with Walt than nearly being stabbed by the less than successful hunter. “You know nothing about Dean or about me!”

The mere thought brought back a lot of the anger that Sam had been able to push aside again, now as the pain seared across his body he ignored that to finally focus on the struggling and fighting man that he had his good knee pressed to his chest, grabbing Roy by the shirtfront to haul him up.

Memories of a year earlier began slipping back through and the rage and pain that fueled him tripled as he still felt every wound inflicted and knew he’d always feel the one on his back.

Anger that someone they’d once counted on as a friend had betrayed them still hurt because Sam knew trust was few and far between in this line of work and certainly once Dean learned who had sold him out it would never be the same for Jefferson.

Visions of the photos he’d seen on Roy’s phone, the sounds he could still hear in his own ears, and the knowledge of what Dean had probably been put through all because Sam had slipped up and revealed too much to his brother fueled his emotional reaction to finally having a physical outlet to get rid of it all.

Sam’s thoughts and mind were focused on things only he could see and wasn’t even aware of the amount of times he’d hit Roy, or the harsh gasping of his own breathing as he yelled at a not so eager to fight back Roy.

“You and Walt, you’re nothing but backstabbing, low down, lying cowards who need to use drugs to make your target weak enough to handle!” he snapped, unaware of the blood covering his fist as he continued to smash it into Roy’s bloodied face.

“I just wanted to find my brother, to help him and you used that! The only way Walt could get the upper hand on Dean would be to drug him or surprise him cause my brother is one hundred percent better at anything than that son of a bitch.

“You say he begged for me? That Walt broke him?” Sam tightened his fist in the battered hunter’s shirt before yanking him up, ignoring Roy’s weak attempts to break his hold or fend off the fury in Sam’s eyes. “Bullshit! Dean’s fought a lot of crap in his life. You have no idea what he’s gone through but no way would some bastard like Walt make him beg. You couldn’t make me beg, not for Dean, and you sure as hell wouldn’t make him or break him.”

“…you…you begged,” Roy spat, still straining but missing the dark change that came over Sam’s already glassy hazel eyes. “Bet before he killed him…so did Dean. Pity I…we…missed…argh!!”

The knife slammed into Roy’s upper thigh as a burst of cold hate went through Sam. “Shut the hell up,” he gritted, refusing those memories and worse as he twisted the knife. “Last damn mistake you and Walt made was going after Dean. I don’t care what the hell you did to me but you will never hurt my brother or anyone else ever again.”

Yanking the knife free, Sam debated briefly then paused to listen as if hearing his name being called but shrugged that off as wishful thinking since he knew that Garth should have, hopefully, gotten to Dean and gotten him out…unless Walt…

A sudden sound had his eyes snapping around only to find himself staring into the bright yellow eyes of what appeared to be a large and very lethal panther, a panther that wasn’t very far away from where Sam still knelt on Roy’s chest.

“Shit,” Sam breathed, not moving since he knew his bad knee wouldn’t allow him to move fast enough to get to feet and he had doubts if he could pull his pistol or if the weapon would even slow the cat down when suddenly Roy must have seen the animal and freaked.

“No…no!” he screamed, thrashing under Sam’s weight until in his panic he hit the injured knee. “She’s close! She’ll kill us both!”

Unable to stop his own painful yelp as agony went up his knee which caused him to fall back on his injured shoulder, Sam lost his hold on Roy and wasn’t able to keep him pinned down. “Roy! Don’t move!” he snapped, eyes never leaving the sleek black cat.

“No! This place…it’s cursed…and that…NOOOO!” Roy tried to get to his feet to run only to fall and then screamed as the panther leaped. “NOOO…!!”

Sam’s hand had been reaching for his weapon but froze when the cat jumped and landed on Roy. “Oh, my God,” he breathed, looking away but still hearing the screams as the hunter was tore apart and knowing he would be next since a quick look told him in the fight with Roy, he’d lost his extra ammo clip and his weapon only had a single round left.

“Be better off using it on myself,” he muttered, forcing a look and gagging at the bloody sight when he noticed the cat was now staring at him with shining yellow eyes and wondering how much this would hurt when the cat seemed to hunch itself as if ready to spring and Sam shut his eyes.

A shot from a weapon that Sam’s brain would recognize anywhere seemed to shoot from the distance, landing in between Sam and the cat. Then the best sound in the world came to Sam’s ears.

“You okay, little brother?”

“Um, been better,” he admitted on reflex then looked to where the voice had come from and for the first time in several days started to relax a little the moment he laid eyes on his brother. “You…this…um…”

Dean’s eyes were locked on those of the panther as he stepped forward to make certain he was between the black cat and his Sam. “Stay still, Sammy,” he spoke without looking but used the tone he normally only did when needing to reassure Sam.

Resisting the urge to reach out, to stop Dean from going any further than he had, Sam’s now wavering gaze had immediately taken in his brother’s obvious injuries and could tell he was in pain but anyone else wouldn’t have been able to see that as the elder Winchester steadily aimed his Colt at the cat.

“Dean…” Sam jerked at the unexpected touch to his already throbbing shoulder when Garth dropped next to him. “I told you to…”

Eyes wide at the sight of both Roy’s bloody remains and the fact that a huge black panther was even there, it took Garth a minute to reply then he rolled his eyes in as close to pure frustration as Sam could recall seeing in him before.

“Me get him to leave once he found out you were here. Right, it’d snow in Hell before I’d get that done, Sam,” he replied, adding sourly. “I clearly get vetoed when it comes to getting either of you to do anything. What’s that?”

“Panther,” came the instant reply as Sam struggled against pain and shock now as he watched Dean seem to just stare at the cat but never once lowered his weapon. “It…Roy didn’t stand a chance.”

“Uh, no duh, genuis,” Dean commented, not feeling any remorse at how the other hunter died. He especially didn’t feel any once his quick look showed him how Sam looked.

Just a quick cursory once over had given Dean a small idea of how seriously Sam might be hurt. He’d seen the blood on his head and the way it was soaking through his shirt from his shoulder. The bruises didn’t worry him as much as the glassiness in his little brother’s eyes but then he figured once he had a moment to relax, he wouldn’t be in much better shape.

Right then it was the now growling panther that had his full attention since it had began to slowly prowl but as it did, Dean made sure he always kept between it and his brother and Garth.

“Call it off, Ophelia!” he suddenly shouted, not wanting his back to the old mansion but also not willing to turn it on the damn cat whose eyes appeared to shine even more. “You call it off or I empty the rest of the magazine into it!”

Both Garth and Sam looked at one another since neither knew who Dean was talking to or why the panther suddenly seemed to turn its full attention on Dean.

Wondering if the shotgun would work, Sam’s gaze drifted toward the mansion again and for the second time his memories seemed to want to come back as if he’d seen this place before.

“Damn it, Ophelia! Sam had nothing to do with what happened then or now. He doesn’t even remember. Your Mom saw to that so call this damn cat off and come out!” Dean was tired, he was in pain and really starting to feel it again so he didn’t have even his limited patience to deal with this.

The panther shifted as if getting ready to lunge and the Colt lifted in warning when a soft breeze seemed to blow through from the banks of the bayou with a strong scent of magnolias and Dean wondered if this was any better.

Dealing with an angry killer panther was one thing and one that he knew his current array of weapons might be able to handle. Dealing with a pissed off spirit of a Cajun voodoo priestess might be beyond him right then and he sure as hell knew it was beyond Garth.

“Don’t shoot!” he snapped, motioning the little hunter not to raise his weapon as he was turning to face the slender form that stepped from the trees. “Ophelia.”

Slender with an almost willow like form, the young woman who stepped from the tree line had light caramel skin with straight ebony hair that flowed past her waist. Barefoot, the dress she wore still showed the blood on the front of however she died.

“Dean, _ma cher_ ,” she offered in a soft musical voice while giving a small nod then held out a hand to the panther who returned to her without a further glance at the humans. “I thought I felt you. Then this must be…your little brother. Not so little anymore, _cher_ ,” she seemed amused when Dean’s eyes narrowed at that subtle jab.

“Cute,” Dean muttered, slipping the safety back on before shoving the Colt in the back of his jeans. “Guess I’m not shocked when everyone said this place was cursed and haunted that it was you. Why though? You shouldn’t be earthbound.”

A slight incline of her head was the only indication of emotion right then as she slowly walked across the damp grass without leaving so much as a blade of grass disturbed while the panther laid where it was. “There are many reasons a spirit will stay bound,” she replied, letting her eyes of deep brown shift to Sam again then smiled. “You think I’m a threat to him?”

“Everything is a threat to Sam until proven otherwise, babe,” Dean shrugged unapologetically, still keeping himself in front of Sam while noticing from the corner of his eye that his brother’s color was getting worse. “Sammy?”

“He’s been shot,” Garth replied, trying to decide if looking at Sam was worth getting a fist in the face when the situation was taken out of his hands.

Fighting the groan that wanted to come when he knelt down, Dean’s eyes first went to Sam’s face. He gauged the bruises and slight swelling weren’t too bad but did pay more attention to the way too large and glassy eyes that he made look at him.

“You in there, Sammy?” he asked, using both hands to shift Sam’s head gently back so he could look closer at his eyes. “Hey, Sasquatch? Can you hear me?”

The lack of a response was beginning to make Dean nervous until finally Sam’s eyes blinked and he seemed to tense at the hands touching him until he remembered it was his brother then his good hand shot up to grip one of Dean’s tightly.

“You real?” he asked quietly, pretty confident he had a concussion so he wasn’t honestly sure of anything especially as he watched the spirit of a young woman that seemed to tingle his memories. “De’n, there’s a ghost.”

“Yeah, I know there is,” Dean shot Garth a warning look when he heard Sam drop a letter in his name like he used to as a kid when hurt or scared. “Hang on a second and we’ll get outta here,” he told his brother before sighing. “Why are you still here, Lia?” he asked, not really aware that he’d used the short form of her name that he’d once used.

Motioning around to the plantation that her family had once cared for, she shook her head. “This land has been cursed for years but it got worse when those…men arrived. They brought great pain to this already pain filled place,” she stared at what remained of Roy. “The bayou is filled with those that they brought here, tormented, played with…like they did your brother.”

Instinct had Dean reaching out to grab her wrist, either not thinking or not caring what she could do to him. “You knew what the bastards did to Sam?” his voice dropped to one that neither Sam nor Garth could hear. “You knew and didn’t…”

“My abilities have limits, Dean. I did help Sam as much as I could,” Ophelia returned equally softly, gazing between the Winchesters as if sensing the pain both men were in and would be in once the injuries and shock settled in. “That one and his friend were scared of the shadows, the sounds and were often distracted too much to hurt him in the ways he wanted. Now…he’s hurt but more scared that he’ll lose you. You’re hurt much more seriously, _ma cher_.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Dean muttered, well aware of his injuries but focused on Sam for another moment to see that Sam’s gaze was locked on the spirit near them. “Sam?”

Flashes of memory came to Sam as his mind struggled to stay awake, to stay on his brother and Garth. He could see the run down plantation in his memories only it didn’t seem quite so bad then, he saw fire and people. He saw the face of the young spirit who seemed to know his brother only she was younger as she screamed at the people. Then there was pain, people dying in the fire and he knew n his heart that he’d nearly met the same end.

Then the memories scattered but still ran through his mind. Dean and Caleb, they were there but where were they and why did Sam feel like running as he suddenly tensed until he felt Dean’s one hand gripping his hand while using his other to hold Sam’s face still when he struggled to jerk away as if pulling away from the heat he felt and…

“No! Get…Dean!” gasping for breath as if his lungs were straining to breath, Sam used what strength he had left to try to push up and away from both the memories and the restraining hands only to be pulled forward into a grip he knew and recognized. “Dean?”

“Hey, easy,” Dean had seen the change only a second before Sam reacted and then could only do what he’d done when the kid was smaller. Grab him and hold on until either Sam calmed down or the image let go. “Sammy, it’s just a memory. It’s over,” he murmured, feeling his own body wanting to give in to the agony but pushed that back for the moment. “It’s over, little brother. He shouldn’t even remember that night.”

Garth had soon decided that he was out of his depth and had stepped back to give the Winchesters space. Watching the darkening sky, he hoped they were out of here by nightfall since he really didn’t want to imagine dealing with either Sam or Dean and their various wounds stuck out here.

“Sam’s memories have been scattered due to other things in his life, Dean,” Ophelia replied, “He was scarred that night and had your father not asked Mama to help him…” she lifted her eyes and read the inner pain in Dean’s. “I can help him this much at least then it’s time for all of you to leave this place and never look back.”

Considering, Dean nodded while keeping his arms around his brother who still struggled slightly as the shock, injuries, and exhaustion of the recent days finally caused something to come back. “It’s okay, Sammy,” he hoped he was right as a slim hand lightly stroked down Sam’s face.

While whispering softly in a sing-song way, the spirit of the young woman also soothed other pains the younger Winchester would have from this encounter. Smiling down, she met Sam’s eyes and while the shock was still there, the fear and confusion had left and that was, as Ophelia knew, what Dean wanted gone.

“Bonjour, Sam,” she murmured softly, recalling another time those eyes didn’t have any of the shadows she saw now. “Sleep now. Dean will need you later.”  
“ Hey, I take care of Sam,” though Dean knew he was going to have to suck it up and let someone deal with a few of these wounds.

Sam was tired, his aches had aches and he was still unsure about his memories of this place even though the more violent ones had faded somewhat. It was then that he thought of something and tried to reach into his jeans pocket. “De’n? She said you’d…know what to do with this.”

“Huh? Who said what, Geek boy?” Dean needed to keep it light for both of them for the moment. He needed to keep it together until he could get Sam someplace secure and maybe lose Garth for a few hours.

“He must mean that lady with the shotgun at the diner in town,” Garth spoke up, looking away from the panther and the softly glowing spirit to reply. “Mama Celeste. She must’ve given Sam something before we left.”

Dean’s lips thinned while Ophelia’s face seemed to grow confused. “What is it, Sam?” he saw where his brother was looking and fished the small item out himself. “ _Sonuvabitch_.”

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” her eyes stayed on the small jade ring in Dean’s palm. “I thought it was lost that night.”

“I looked for it, Lia. I did, but I couldn’t find it and with Sam hurt…” Dean squeezed Sam’s wrist in reassurance before standing to face the now glittering spirit. “Your Mom always was a shrewd one. She told them that she knew Sam was coming so I guess that’s what she meant by I’d know what to do with this,” he ran the ring, what had been a simple ring bought on a spur of the moment, though his fingers before holding it out. “Is this one of those things holding you here, Lia?”

Smiling fully while she took the ring, Ophelia met his green eyes before standing on her toes to lightly brush a ghostly kiss along Dean’s bruised and blooded face. “That and to tell you to finally let it go,” she replied, adding softly while stepping back. “You couldn’t have stopped it, _ma cher._ You tried and now you need to let that guilt go and focus on Sam. Focus on him and what’s to come.”

“After I deal with Walt’s body then I can focus on…okay, I take it that was your way of handling that?” Dean blew out a tired breath when a bright flash of lightning seemed to come from the sky to strike where he knew the cabin was.

“That place of filth and pain will burn as it should have burned decades ago and all of this with it,” Ophelia’s eyes seemed to glow as she lifted a hand down the path. “This house, these lands will go back to nature and I will finally move on. Take your brother and friend and leave now, Dean,” she told him with a final smile. “I can ensure your safety that long.”

Understanding that the fire that would claim the cabin would also take a good section of this place as well before anyone from the tiny town even thought to call what resembled a fire department if they even did, Dean nodded.

“I’m sorry, Lia,” he called out but knew she was gone then knew he needed to focus on one thing. Getting them off these grounds before the fire consumed it. “Garth, help me get Sam up.”

Getting a semi-conscious, barely with it Sam to his feet was one thing but luckily Dean had been dealing with his brother since he’d been a baby and knew how best to manhandle him back to where the Impala was stashed.

Gasping for air, Garth fell into the car. “How did you do that when I know you’ve gotta be in agony?” he asked, shocked that Dean was still conscious after that trek to the Impala since he’d taken most of Sam’s weight. “He’s heavy!”

“Yeah, little brother can be a handful when he’s hurt or barely with it,” Dean agreed, covering the agony in his body well and honestly surprised he wasn’t coughing up blood, which he guessed meant he wasn’t bleeding inside. “This is good. Wait ‘til he’s awake cause he’s a pain in the ass when he’s hurt or…huh. Garth, what the hell happened to my car?”

“Oh…Roy kinda smashed the window,” Garth was really glad he was on the other side of the Impala and reckoned Roy got off easy since being eaten by that panther was probably more merciful than what Dean would have done to him for touching the Impala. “You want me to drive?”

Ticked off that the damn window had been smashed out again, Dean had just managed to get Sam into the backseat without too much hassle and laid something he’d yanked from the trunk over his brother to fight off the shock he knew he was in when that question came.

“You drive my car?” he blinked, not certain he’d heard correctly then took into consideration who he was with and sighed. “No one but Sam drives my car, Garth.”

“You in any shape to drive clear to Houma?” the little hunter countered, one look at Dean right then told him the answer but it was a matter of getting him to accept that issue that Garth knew was a problem.

“Dean, you’ve knife cuts, burns, and bruises all over. Your face looks like hell, your head’s bleeding and you probably have one hell of a concussion. You are going to pass out the second you sit down and aren’t focusing on Sam or anything,” he pointed out, slowly coming around the car. “I know you’re used to it just being you and Sam now and that’s cool but…you drive and you will crash. It that what you…ummm…”

Hating to be lectured by anyone much less Garth, Dean scowled before giving the keys a hard look then pulled the little hunter up by his jacket. “One scratch, one little scratch on my baby and I will do more than kill you,” he growled, dropping the keys into Garth’s hand then went around to the passenger side. “Closest motel.”

“Whew,” Garth blew out a breath but quickly got behind the wheel before Dean changed his mind, starting the car he was more than careful when he backed out then a look at the fire that seemed to be slowly consuming the place reminded him that it would be a good idea to get out of there. “You okay or…”

A look in the side mirror to watch the cleansing fire take away what had been a place of pain and misery for a long time, even more recently, Dean then turned in the seat to gaze at his brother in the back seat before finally settling back in the seat to feel every wound, cut, burn, kick and whatever else he’d gotten on this job begin to remind him of their presence.

“Just get us outta here and then we’ll see how I am if I don’t slip into a coma on the way,” he sighed, suddenly exhausted but knowing with as many times as he’d been hit in the head on top of the blow that had cracked it open that he shouldn’t go to sleep.

Dean snagged the box of cassette tapes from the glove box to go through them until he found the one he wanted then pushed it into the player while holding up a finger. “Not a word about my music or…”

“…driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole…”

The soft, sleepy and slightly slurred voice from the backseat made Dean want to both laugh and reach back to slap his half asleep younger brother. “Shut up, Sam,” he returned, giving Garth a warning look while shooting Sam one. “That rule applies to you, little brother. No one else now shut up and go to sleep. We’ll get to a motel soon.”

Sam’s reply was unrecognizable since he’d turned to bury his face into the leather jacket that Dean had covered him with, which is what Dean knew his brother would do as soon as he felt the jacket.

“Yeah, I know, kiddo,” Dean could guess what had been said and slowly let himself lean against the door and closed his eyes. “I do too.”

Not paying attention to the music, Garth paid more attention to not hurting the Impala when he looked over to see that Dean had fallen asleep and Sam had finally stop trying to get comfortable in a back seat much too small for his 6’4” frame.

Realizing that he had the time to himself for a short while, Garth finally could let out the breath he’d been holding since this whole mess started. He knew and accepted that Dean would kick him out the moment they reached a motel cause he wouldn’t want anyone else dealing with Sam’s wounds.

He just wondered how the older Winchester planned on dealing with his own numerous wounds considering Garth had doubts if Dean would want Sam seeing them.

“Idjit Winchesters,” he shook his head dryly with a grin, knowing that he’d be here for them no matter how much either of them bitched because he had his own promises to keep.

**TBC**


	7. Chapter Seven

** Twelve Hours Later at a motel in Houma, Louisiana: **

“Out, now. Get out before I put you out.”

“Dude, be reasonable. You’re barely on your feet.”

“I went to the damn ER because you harped more than Bobby could on his best day. Now get out or I’ll remind you that Sammy isn’t the Winchester you need to be scared of.”

Close to actually pounding his fist on something, Garth once again understood why Bobby was often so grumpy. He’d been dealing with Winchesters steady for almost a week and honestly was ready to go find the worst monster he could think of since that would probably be less stressful.

“You went to the ER because you had a gash in the back of your head that needed twenty-six stitches to close and you had a concussion that was close to putting you in a coma,” he shot back, seeing that vein in Dean’s jaw twitch but felt he needed to make one more stab at it. “You were throwing up and even those docs said they didn’t know why you didn’t have internal bleeding from the beating you took. Dean, Sam’s still hurt and you released yourself AMA and…”

“I haven’t thrown up in five hours and I’ve nearly stopped seeing three of everything…except you and that’s because you won’t stop moving like a hyperactive five year old,” Dean yawned, careful as he rubbed a towel over his still damp hair.

Dean had to give Garth credit. He’d gotten them to Houma faster than Dean would have thought, though he also accepted that he’d passed out and that had left the little hunter on his own for most of the drive.

He’d woken up in time to see that they’d located a motel well off the road and Garth was trying to get Sam out of the backseat by himself.

It had been when Dean had gone to get out of the Impala that he began to realize he needed more help than a few aspirin, some home done stitches and some ice. He’d stood to help Garth only to fall when both legs gave out, his head blazed with agony and he began throwing up violently.

“You’re lucky the motel owner’s…wife…girlfriend…whatever was a nurse and could stitch Sam up without asking any questions,” Garth muttered, ducking the towel. “Dean, let me…”

Easing himself down to sit on the edge of one of the double beds in the motel room, Dean refused the longing to just fall back and sleep. He knew what still needed to be done and just chose to wait it out.

“Garth, look, man, I appreciate you helping Sam…even though I could point out that I told you not to tell him where I went, but you did all you can,” Dean told him, knowing the other hunter meant well in his own geeky way but just wanted to handle the rest of this alone. “You got a ride to go get your car so go and Sam and I’ll be touch once we get back to Kansas.”

“…Alright,” Garth sighed, clearly unhappy but knew when not to push Dean so with a shrug he made his usual move. “Take care of your brother and yourself,” he hugged Dean before the other man could think of a way to avoid the move but was careful since he didn’t want to cause him more pain than he was in now. “I’ll go watch Kevin talk to a rock.”

Dean waited until Garth was gone and he heard the sound of the car of whoever he’d called trail off to slowly take a deep breath then let it out as if testing the pain he’d be in then let a good deal of the shields he’d kept up to portray that he was fine to Garth to drop.

Glancing over to the next bed, his gaze settled on Sam as if gauging how well his brother was resting before making himself move.

Going over to sit next to his brother, Dean was careful when he uncovered the bandage over Sam’s shoulder to check the stitches himself.

While he’d been stuck in the ER with an over anxious Garth, Dean had managed to get more details out of him. Starting from the time Sam showed up at the houseboat to when they separated at the plantation.

Several items stood out in Dean’s mind that would have to be dealt with at a later time. A visit to Texas to see Jefferson was chief among them since while Dean had suspected that was how Walt knew he was coming, it was quite another to actually know that the man had set Sam up.

Excuses and reasons weren’t always big in Dean’s big and especially not when it involved getting his brother hurt and while he knew Sam would shrug it off openly, betrayals always hurt and this one was too large to be ignored.

Right then, it was the more open wounds that worried Dean. The motel manager’s wife had done a good job at stitching Sam’s shoulder up since Dean couldn’t see any signs of infection yet and neither side seemed red or puffy which he knew from experience was a good sign.

The gash on Sam’s forehead had also required a couple little stitches but those also looked good and the bump seemed to be going down. Yeah, his little brother’s forehead and jaw, from he guessed a fist, looked pretty colorful but those too would go away.

The other little bruises didn’t worry him but Dean still felt his fingers curl into a fist as his gaze fell on the older scars he could see right then from Sam’s other encounter with Walt and Roy.

“Never again,” he whispered, knowing that while neither hunter would be able to hurt anyone else again their deaths would only be a small comfort in consideration of the pain they had caused.

Reaching up to lightly card his fingers back through Sam’s seriously too long hair, thinking back to when times were simpler for them both. When the worst thing his brother had to face was the death of his girlfriend.

“And I bitched about Wendigos and possessed paintings,” he muttered, deciding that Sam was still sleeping alright and didn’t seem to be in pain so he judged it safe enough to step back into the tiny bathroom to finish giving his own wounds a once over.

Dean had wondered how Garth had explained his injuries to the hospital staff since they hadn’t asked him any questions and he’d been glad for that since some things he just hadn’t felt like dealing with.

“ _Sonuvabitch_ ,” he hissed as his hand touched the stitches on the back of head a bit too hard and knew that spot was going to be tender for awhile.

Leaning on the sink, Dean took in his bruised and battered face. A lot of the swelling had gone down but some remained until he took the time to ice it. The cuts and wounds on his chest weren’t too serious except for a couple deeper ones that had become infected in the time since Walt had inflicted them.

Moving his fingers down a little to probe, Dean bit back a curse as he touched the one burn. Deep and red, he reached for a wet cloth to lightly clean away the infection so he could dress it as there were certain wounds he wanted handled before Sam woke up.

Glad that the ER staff had dressed most of the wounds since he couldn’t begin to reach the few on his back, Dean considered pulling on his black T-shirt then shrugged that off as a waste of energy. Sam would want to see them before he was satisfied that Dean was alright.

Looking down, his eyes noticed the photo he’d taken from his wallet and Dean’s eyes closed, recalling the day one summer when he’d been nineteen and his Dad had taken him and Sam on a case in the bayous of Louisiana with him.

A simple case took a bad turn when it turned out there was more in the bayous than a possible swamp monster and Dean still knew the terror of nearly losing Sam to that mess. ‘One of the few times Dad actually showed real concern,’ he remembered.

John Winchester had raised his sons to fight a war and he didn’t approve of showing any emotion. He rarely showed any positive ones to either of his sons, especially Sam, but he had that job.

Dean had seen his father in a lot of stages of anger. Hell, he’d been on the receiving end of a lot of John’s anger but that night, on grounds past the plantation that he’d just seen burned, he saw his father fight literally bare handed to save his youngest son from being burned alive in the middle of some ritual meant to call up some dark mojo.

They’d met Ophelia and her mother, Mama Celeste, while on that case and while John had his objections to accepting help he’d been impressed…or intimidated by the feisty older woman and Dean had been more than impressed with her daughter.

Eighteen and shy, she hadn’t been the type of girl that Dean normally went for and he accepted that it was mostly friendship since Dean wasn’t stupid enough not to know what Celeste could’ve done if he’d have even thought of putting the moves on her girl.

He had bought the jade ring in a cheap curio shop in New Orleans on a whim and because Sam was annoying the hell out of him that trip so he went in to just let Sam look around while they waited on John and Caleb to get done scouting leads.

Ophelia had worn the ring after Dean gave it to her until a week later when all broke loose and she and Sam were grabbed by a cult of dark voodoo worshippers looking for more sacrifices.

The old plantation had been in the care of Ophelia’s family since it had passed from the original owners to former slaves freed after the Civil War but who had stayed with the family until the last of the line passed away and then their descendants continued to take care of the land but never touched the manor.

Celeste’s son had gone over to the dark side of their ancient religion and would use the lands behind the old mansion, near the bayou’s edge, to hold large ceremonies and it was in one of those ceremonies that Sam, at fifteen, had witnessed things so bloody and violent, that after barely saving him from death, John had asked the older woman for a way, any way, so his boy wouldn’t remember that night.

For Dean, the terror of watching those nearly drugged out cult members cut and bleed his fully conscious but immobile little brother before tying him in a cage of burning wood was still things he woke up to in the middle of the night.

A sudden thump from inside the bedroom instantly made him reach for the Colt laying on the bathroom sink next to his hand then just as quickly stopped to listen again, then let out a shaky breath before calling out. “Staying on the bed is a better option for you.”

“Now…you say…that.”

Sam sounded worn out, voice tired and shaky but Dean knew how his little brother was after first waking up hurt, sick, or hungover so that didn’t worry him too much at the moment.

“Common sense, Sammy,” Dean replied with a small grin that dropped the second he heard the sound of his brother throwing up.

Out the bathroom door, across the room and dropping down next to where Sam was half on and half off the bed and trying to support himself with an injured shoulder and knee while throwing up into the trashcan that Dean had placed between the beds earlier…just in case,

“Hey. Sammy, easy there,” quickly moving to support Sam, Dean took another look to be sure no stitches had been ripped open and after a couple more moments of nothing but dry heaves, nudged his brother back up so he was laying fully on the bed. “Sip this,” he held out a bottle of orange Gatorade he had thought to have Garth pick up since he figured his brother would probably be sick upon first waking up.

Dean’s gaze was sharp as he watched Sam take a couple drinks from the bottle before easing it away in favor of a cold cloth. “Get up too fast?” he asked knowingly, guessing it was a combination of that and probably the pain of trying to stand on his knee, which was the one thing that Sam had that worried him since it did seem swelled.

“Yeah,” Sam winched as he went to move his arm before remembering he’d been shot then his eyes snapped back open to pin his brother. “Dean, are you okay?” he asked before his now clearing vision saw the answer in the form of his brother’s injuries. “You…they…how bad?”

Waiting for Sam to settle on a question, Dean considered what he should say and what he should gloss over then just decided to wing it. “Concussion, some broken ribs, bruised up inside and out, few nasty burns and cuts but all and all…and considering how much the bastard hated me…I still think I came outta this better than you, Sammy,” he kept his tone easy going in the hopes to calm Sam down and keep him from dwelling on this too much.

Trying to push up on an elbow, Sam gave up and finally let Dean help him to sit up against the pillows but as Dean was moving to grab another pillow, he was able to see more of the wounds and his gaze landed on the deep burn on Dean’s side that hadn’t been recovered yet. “What…what the hell did…he use?”

This time, Dean did grab for the shirt he’d tossed on his bed to pull it on before sitting back on the edge of Sam’s bed. “Old branding tool, no big deal,” he shrugged, sighing at the sound of Sam blowing out a breath between clenched teeth and knew what would be coming. “Alright, let’s just get this out in the air so you can vent, I can make sure you’re alright, we can both sleep this off and head home.”

Seriously wishing he’d had more time to plan this speech in his head, Dean resisted the urge to pace or move as he normally would and stayed sitting. “You’re pissed that I took off on my own to do this. I get that but I’d promised Walt after he blasted us to Heaven that when I got back I’d deal with him so I did.

“It had nothing to do with not trusting you or anything else. It had everything to do with Walt. He made his last mistake when he touched you and I didn’t want you near either of the sons of bitches again,” Dean looked at his hands where the rope burns were still pretty visible since he’d down a lot of damage to himself in that area while trying to get them loose enough to find the razor blade.

“Did it happen like I’d planned it? No way in hell but in the end it worked out. Walt told me what I needed to know and he ended up dead, which is what you need to know, Sam. The bastard is dead and will never be a threat to you, me, or anyone else,” of that Dean was certain, looking over when he felt fingers grip his wrist.

“You never told me that you went after him before,” Sam murmured, looking at his own wounds to see they’d been taken care of and knowing he still wasn’t hurt as bad as his brother probably was, ignoring the nausea if he even tried to move his leg right then.

“You slept through it so there wasn’t a reason to,” Dean reasoned, going to fill a couple ice bags then carefully laying one over Sam’s knee while holding the other to the back of his own head. “Should’ve stayed outta this one, Sammy.”

That made Sam snort, wincing and not surprised at the pain pills that were plopped into his hand along with the Gatorade again. Dean still seemed to know what he needed and when. Those were things that Sam knew he’d taken for granted…until he thought he’d lose his brother again.

“They would’ve killed you, Dean,” he told him seriously, no doubt at all in Sam’s mind that would have been his brother’s fate if he and Garth hadn’t arrived. “Walt would’ve…Dean, what else did…I mean…what else did he…”

Recalling the recorder and some things Walt had said in addition to the photos he saw on Roy’s phone, Dean had a good hunch what his younger brother was trying to ask and just turned his hand over to grip Sam’s wrist in return. “Sam…” he began more seriously upon feeling the younger man tense.

“He let you hear that to…I didn’t…when he called me he let me…damn it,” Sam’s words were rushing together as he tried to get out what he wanted but didn’t want to say anything that would upset his brother.

“Sam, I know what Walt said to me and I can guess what he said to you since he was big on bragging, especially when he’s got the upper hand, but the one thing I know for a damn fact…is that you will always be a better hunter, a better person than either of them and…what you heard? Forget it,” Dean knew he was getting a modified bitch face even before he looked.

“I took the risks when I went, I got nailed but I’ve been hurt before. I’ll heal and so will you,” taking another look at gash on Sam’s forehead gave Dean a chance to see his brother’s eyes were clearing more. “Will I be cranky as hell the moment you suggest looking at these? Yep, but then I figure you’ll be the same way so again I say, you needed to stay out of this one.”

Sam understood Dean’s reasoning behind doing this on his own and maybe he even accepted it a little but that didn’t mean he had to like it or that he would ever just let his face being hurt if could stop it. “I told Roy when he asked why I didn’t give up trying to help you this time that…” he paused a moment before lifting big hazel eyes up. “You’re my brother and I’d still die for you, Dean.”

Not expecting that line, Dean slowly looked over and the moment he met those big eyes he blew out a breath. “You’re gonna chick flick this on me, aren’t you?” he asked, knowing he should’ve seen this coming since when Sam was hurt he still had the habit of going emotional. “Sam…”

“I told you back in Kansas that you were more than a grunt, that you were my big brother and I meant that but I didn’t mean that you were Super…Batman and needed to be this invincible warrior against the forces of evil by yourself, Dean,” Sam told him, feeling able to sit up more then bit his lip when a hand gently pushed him back. “Batman isn’t invincible. He’s got someone backing him up.”

“Robin dies too much and you, little brother of mine, are not dying,” Dean shot back firmly, refusing the mere thought then understanding.

His refusal to think of Sam dying is probably a lot like what Sam felt so many times when Dean’s actions placed his life in jeopardy.

“I get it, Geek boy,” he sighed, then gave a last squeeze to Sam’s wrist before going to stand up. “Though I will never fully just ignore the danger and stop being manic obsessive about keeping you safe. That’s big brother prerogative or something.”

Sam chuckled lightly, guessing he’d take that as it came when something else came to mind and waited until Dean had taken three steps away to speak again. “Who was she, Dean?”

“ _Sonuvabitch_ ,” he’d prayed that with everything going on that Sam’s fuzzy memories wouldn’t remember Ophelia or what else seeing her might’ve brought back. That single soft question ripped that hope away and he was left with either answering with the hope that Sam didn’t ask anymore or bluffing his way around it.

“I’d seen her before hadn’t I?” Sam asked, pretty positive on that even without the additional memories. “You have one basic reaction to anything supernatural. You shoot first and ask questions later. This time you didn’t. This time you called her by name and she knew you. So…who was she and why do I think I should know something that I…Dean?”

The urge to snap a reply was a little too strong but Dean knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault. He’d been fifteen back then and hurt this time but any answer Dean gave was likely to bring back more than he wanted but again a look back into those big soulful eyes made him give in and made him beret himself for teaching Sam that trick.

“Her name was Ophelia and yeah, you’d seen her before,” he sighed, sitting back on Sam’s bed since he figured it would be the easiest. “You were fifteen, I was nineteen and we were with Dad on a case down here. You got…hurt and…Dad asked Mama Celeste to help you not to remember what you’d seen or…what was done.”

Dean dropped his head to stare at the floor, his own thoughts going back to that time and to another time, the last time he’d seen her alive. “Lia was her daughter and this cult grabbed you both. You took the brunt of it because you were a teenager and an outsider but she helped me and Caleb get…to you and help you. You shouldn’t remember, Sam.”

It was the tone that told Sam that his brother was holding things back but the low, shaking tone also meant that whatever it was that Dean was holding back still hurt him so Sam thought pushing now wasn’t a good idea.

This time he was able to sit up fully and only hesitated when it came to stretching or moving his knee too much. “Dad asked her to do that?” he had a hard time visualizing his anti-magic or anti-anything supernatural father asking for help from a Voodoo Priestess or anything.

Laughing dryly, Dean looked over with a small smile that seemed sad. “The one time I wish you could remember Dad being so scared over you is also the one time I’m glad you can’t because, little brother, you still don’t need those memories,” he told him, then needed to know. “What do you remember?”

“Fire. I could feel fire and smell it and…burning flesh and…blood,” Sam shuddered then felt the firm hand that gripped his good shoulder. “Back there, I saw people moving and could hear others screaming. I heard you and thought I saw Dad fighting with some giant but…”

‘So much for not remembering,’ Dean thought bitterly, clearing his thought to bring Sam’s attention back to him. “Long story short, you got hurt, Lia’s Mom took most of it away then Dad dropped up in a motel in Tennessee where I got to play nursemaid to my pain in the ass little brother while a Wendigo tried to eat Caleb.”

That short and pithy description made Sam smile, and he relaxed after a few more moments when he looked over at Dean again. “Did she die there?”

“Damn, I forgot how many questions you can ask when sick,” Dean grumbled, but moved his hand up to grip the back of Sam’s neck like he would when offering support then answered. “No, Lia…she died…right before I came to Stanford to get you.”

That made Sam’s eyes dart back over to see the way his brother’s jaw was twitching, a sure sign that Dean was fighting with something. Then the timeline hit and he got it. “You said you were working a case in New Orleans right before Dad vanished,” he recalled, feeling the grip on his neck tighten which meant to back off but this was one time Sam knew he couldn’t.

“I heard her tell you to let go of the guilt, that you couldn’t have stopped it. Is that what happened? Did Ophelia die on that…damn it, Dean,” the frustration was there as his brother pulled away to walk across the room. “Talk to me. Did something happen because you left when Dad…”

“She was already gone before I found out that Dad had dropped outta sight,” Dean finally broke in, knowing what the spirit had said and could only wish it was that simple to forget or forgive.

Looking over, Dean’s finger shot out in warning the moment he noticed Sam trying to stand. “You park your ass cause I don’t think I can haul you back up if you faceplant,” he ordered before scrubbing both hands over his face. “Dad and I hadn’t been hunting together in awhile. I got a call one day from Lia, Ophelia, that she was being tracked in New Orleans and it had been going on since she moved there.

“I go down and it wasn’t twenty-four hours after I’d hit town that I got shot,” Dean heard Sam’s oath and offered a smirk. “Yeah, that was my response to it. Lia had made waves in the local New Orleans Voodoo culture. Because of her heritage, she was a natural with doing whatever it was she did and one of the lesser known priests or whatever decided she was a threat.”

Since research was and always had been his specialty, Sam had an idea as to what his brother was saying and what he must have been facing. “Spell on spell?” he asked quietly, using the stand between the beds to push him up then hoped the wall would give him enough balance so he could test the strength of his knee before Dean’s attention was pulled off this tale. “This guy wanted her gone so…”

“The French Quarter was afraid of this guy and afraid to talk to me. Before I could get enough information to take him out or find out how to even do that…I found her in her apartment,” Dean’s fingers clenched on the dresser as he thought back to that night.

“You couldn’t have protected her, Dean. That kind of stuff would have been beyond what we’d been taught,” Sam knew this and thought so did his brother when something in the way Dean’s shoulders were bunched warned him that it wasn’t that simple. “Dean?”

“They didn’t kill her, Sammy,” he murmured, lifting his head so he could meet Sam’s eyes in the mirror and was drawn into his memories that he missed what Sam was up to. “I did.”

Concentrating on not falling if he took a step, Sam nearly did fall when he went to move too fast at that unexpected announcement. “Come again?” he stared at his brother, not sure he’d heard him. “You…Dean, what’re you saying?”

“I’d been out all day trying to find someone to talk to me about this bokor or whatever he was when finally a little old guy who could’ve been a hundred if he was a day found me. He began talking about hoodoo spells, souls and stuff that we’d only heard Pastor Jim and Bobby talk about in whispers when we weren’t supposed to be listening,” Dean’s tone had dropped to the one he used when fighting back emotion, the gruff one that had always warned Sam that his brother was close to breaking his own ‘no chick-flick moments’ rule.

“He was telling me what to do or where to look when she called me and said there were people outside her place and they’d broken her wards. I heard her scream as something or someone broke down the door then the call disconnected,” he could still remember the terror in that scream.

Turning to lean against the dresser, Dean’s gaze was intense but clearly not in the present as he remembered stepping through that broken down door and around broken, ripped furniture, shattered glass until he stepped into what Ophelia liked to call her sunroom and found her.

“She…I don’t know what the hell they did but she wasn’t Ophelia anymore, Sam,” he murmured, that day etched in his brain. “She had this dull, almost dead look when I first called to her and then…she just went for me. There was no recognition, no life, just murder in nearly white eyes as she tried to claw at me first then pulled a knife.

“I was able to get the blade off of her without too many cuts and restrained her until I could call a friend of hers and that friend called someone else who finally told me that this son of a bitch had worked some really bad crap and that essentially Lia was gone,” Dean’s smile was tight now. “When you lost your soul you still had the ability to think. She lost hers and lost the ability to do anything but either stare right through you or kill because that’s what this guy did.

“I thought if I killed the asshole it would break the spell but he’d vanished. I spent two days looking but again no one would talk and when Lia got loose one day and nearly killed someone I knew what I needed to do. I knew what she’d want me to do so I…I…” voice breaking, Dean pushed away from the dresser only to feel a hand on his shoulder and his eyes snapped up to meet Sam’s. “I killed her, Sammy.”

Nodding, Sam had quickly seen how this story was heading and understood the spirit’s words to his brother. Just as he also knew Dean, knew his reactions to things and understood his brother’s pain.

While Sam had always been the more emotional one, he knew his brother still felt the emotions but had just grown up knowing how to hide them better than Sam did. Dean buried his deeper emotions like Sam was learning how to now.

So back then when he’d basically on his own, Dean’s pain, grief, and guilt would have been sucked in internally only to be pushed to one side by John’s disappearance and everything else that had been happening in one nightmare after another for them.

“You said it yourself, Dean. Ophelia wouldn’t want to live like that,” Sam told him, keeping his hand loose since he wasn’t sure of Dean’s mood right then. “You did everything you could to help her and in the end, you did help her. She doesn’t blame you and doesn’t want you to blame yourself,” tightening his grip slightly, he waited a beat to add. “Isn’t that what you told me about Madison?”

Once again his little brother could stop him in his tracks. Dean accepted that he had done all he could for Ophelia but it didn’t make it any easier and he’d just filed that under all the other mistakes in his life until Sam’s last comment hit home.

He had told Sam that after he’d been forced to kill Madison, the first girl since Jessica that Sam had allowed himself to care for only to learn she’d been the werewolf they’d been hunting.

“College boy still thinks he’s so smart,” Dean muttered, reaching up to grip and squeeze the wrist of the hand on his shoulder when he then shifted a narrowed look up. “Sammy? What the hell are you doing outta bed and how are you on that damn leg?”

Grinning, Sam offered a one shouldered shrug that didn’t involve his injured shoulder. “Batman needs Robin. I guess you still need me,” he replied, then couldn’t hide the pain any longer and bit his lower lip to keep from groaning. “Maybe the whole walking thing wasn’t a good idea though?”

“You think, genuis?” Dean snorted with an eye roll that was remarkably close to those that Sam still did now and then but he was quick to shift so he was supporting Sam’s good side even as he felt his younger brother start to wobble. “Bed. Ice. Food. Sleep,” he recited in order the things he knew they both needed.

“Add something stronger than what you gave me earlier to that and we’ll talk,” Sam muttered, gripping Dean’s arm for support as he was helped back to the bed but was surprised when Dean didn’t immediately release the grip as he helped Sam ease down onto the pillows.

“I’ll always need you, Sammy,” Dean told him in the same tone he only used with his brother when he was willing to allow chick flick moments and knew the kid was half asleep anyway. “No matter what it may look like or what I may sound like, I’ll always need you and I will always be there for you.”

Nodding, the pain and those earlier pain pills were taking effect as Sam’s eyes drifted closed but struggled to open again to find his brother. “We good, Dean?”

“Yeah, little brother, we’re good,” Dean assured him, waiting until Sam seemed to settle into sleep before replacing the icepack over his knee and vowing that if it was still swelled when Sam woke up he’d drag him into that ER.

Keeping a hand on Sam’s arm a moment longer, he pushed Sam’s hair out of his face with a smirk while making a mental note that it was time to start bugging his brother about his hair.

Finally after taking another look around the room, checking the door and windows were locked and warded in a way that he only did when he knew Sam was sleeping and that he’d probably crash as soon as he laid down, Dean stretched out on the bed and felt every ounce of his body ache in ways that it hadn’t in years.

“Yeah, this’ll be fun in the morning,” he decided, not even having the strength to reach for a blanket as he took one final look at Sam and considered what might be coming down the road for them.

His little brother might have to do these trials but that sure didn’t mean Dean would let him face them alone and he’d make certain that he’d keep Sam safe through them…no matter whose lungs he had to rip out.

“G’night, Sammy,” he whispered, letting his eyes close and knowing that no matter who or what they faced that he’d always have Sam’s back…just like he knew his brother would have his.

** Elsewhere that night, in Texas: **

The hunting community wasn’t as tight as it once had been but Jefferson still had contact with some hunters who could keep him in the loop.

Ever since his last conversation with Sam some days earlier; his guilt over allowing Walt to blackmail him into setting the Winchester boys up had been eating at him.

He knew without a doubt if Bobby Singer or Jim Murphy were still alive and had found out about it that his life expectancy would have dropped.

The older man had actually been expecting a visit from a very pissed off Dean and still figured that once the boy got over whatever the hell had happened to him in Louisiana he probably would be dropping in.

Jefferson had watched Dean and Sam grow up. He knew without question the lengths those boys would go to for one another so he knew that the moment Dean learned everything about his involvement with Sam’s injuries that all bets would be off.

Friendship aside, anyone who even thought of messing with Dean’s brother usually paid for that mistake with their lives.

“I just wish he’d take as much care with himself,” the older man sighed, staring at the glass of whiskey on his desk just as his doorbell started buzzing. “Who the hell is that this late at night?”

No matter if he didn’t hunt as much as he once had, Jefferson wasn’t a foolish man. He knew never to assume whatever was knocking at nearly one in the damn morning was friendly.

“Who is it?” he called, opening the small eye slot but not seeing anyone there.

Reaching for the small caliber pistol he kept in a drawer in the side table by the door, he was reaching for the lock when the buzzer sounded again. “Who is it?” he asked again, not liking this but then when he didn’t see anyone again he assumed it might be kids playing a very bad joke.

“It’s a little too late to be out ringing people’s…oh sweet Mother of God,” he breathed after opening the door and expecting to scare some local kids away only to fall back in shock, so shocked that he even forgot the weapon in his hand.

“Hello, Jeff,” a voice that Jefferson hadn’t heard in more than eight years greeted before it’s owner stepped from the shadows. “It’s been a long time.”

Being a hunter for so long had left Jefferson prepared for a lot of shocks and he’d seen a lot of crap over the years but he hadn’t been expecting this and wasn’t certain what kind of trick this was but was now getting his thoughts nearly back together.

“This isn’t possible,” he snapped, recalling the weapon in his weapon and began to raise it only to have a very solid fist grab his hand while another gripped him by the throat to push him back against a wall. “You…you’re dead,” he gasped, knowing his house was warded against demons and had thought, thanks to Bobby Singer, it was against anything else as well.

“I was…I am,” the man agreed, tightening his grip while staring into Jefferson’s wide eyes with a gaze that was still as cold and hard as Jeff could recall it being. “I’m not certain what I am now or anything but I do know one thing, Jeff…I know you should never have touched my boys.”

Before Jefferson could think of a reply or try to break the grip on his throat he felt the brief burst of pain as something sharp pieced his chest and understood with a final gasp that it wasn’t Dean or Sam who had dealt with his treachery but another and he supposed it was fitting that it was him.

“Goodbye, Jeff,” the man whispered then slipped back out into the shadows.

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it is finally over. Am I evil? This is the part where you, the reader, can take into your own little imaginations who killed Jefferson.   
> I hope everyone who has read this one and has had the patience to bear with me through all 7 chapters has enjoyed it. I thank everyone for your reviews as those will always mean the world to me. Now it is on to other fics for the boys.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N II: I know, I haven’t down an actual chapter story in awhile (yes, I will finish Forgotten Family) but CH 2 will be up very soon. Yes, I also know I’m still evil to leave it here. Dean’s in deep, Sam has no clue to where his brother is and can he find out before it’s too late? Stay tuned.


End file.
